Tag Archives: David Steiner

The EdReports Scam

19 Dec

By Thomas Ultican 12/19/2025

In order to monetize public education, billionaires started creating both for-profit and non-profit businesses to advance their agenda. ‘The 74’ recently wrote about changes at one of these organizations. EdReports was established in 2014 by Bill Gates associate, Eric Hirsch, and was fully funded in 2018. It masquerades as an independent non-profit that evaluates curriculum materials. It rates these materials based on their fidelity with the common core state standards and the science of reading.

During the Obama administration, billionaires became frustrated because teachers and friends of public education were destroying their messaging on social media. To counteract the success teachers were having, the super wealthy started creating new on-line media and liberally funding them. Their biggest success has been ‘The 74’ established by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, and Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, theWalton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies, all of which are owned by multi-billionaires.

Education focused organizations are given legitimacy when ‘The 74’ writes puff pieces about them. A recent example is the October 2nd article, “Eric Hirsch, EdReports’ Founding CEO, to Step Down – The next decade, one expert said, should consider the role of AI in curriculum and making materials more useful.” It is a glowing account of how Eric Hirsch was able to “change the way school districts and parents think about curriculum.” The mention of AI in the sub-title is a timely promotion of the technology industries latest harmful edtech offering.

Eric Hirsch and EdReports

Hirsch earned a bachelor’s degree (1992) in political science and government from Tufts University, a medium sized liberal arts and research school in the greater Boston area. He went onto the University of Colorado in Boulder where he obtained a master’s in political science and government (1997). His first job out of college was in Denver working for the National Conference of State Legislators from 1997-2002.

After 4 years there, he went to work at the Alliance for Quality Teaching in Denver as executive director for a year and a half. He then spent four years in North Carolina as executive director of the Center for Teaching Quality. From there, he went to Santa Cruz, California for seven years working as chief officer, external affairs at the Bill Gates established New Teachers Center (NTC). His total earnings during his last year in Santa Cruz (2013) was reported to be $175,000 (TIN 26-2427526).

In 2014, Hirsch left NTC and traveled to Durham, North Carolina to found EdReports. It is unknown how or if he was paid. During the first four years from 2014-2017 EdReports (TIN 47-1171149) filed non-profit tax form 990N which indicates they had less than $50,000 in revenue which only required a post card tax filing. In 2018, EdReports took in over $15 million in contributions. They had to file an IRS form 990 and Hirsch’s declared income and benefits were reported exceeding $300,000.

EdReports claims it is:

“funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Gates Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.” The 2018 donation of $15 million included giving by Carnegie (TIN 13-1628151) $200,000, Overdeck (TIN 26-4377643) $390,000, Gates (TIN 56-2618866) $1,500,000 and Schusterman (TIN 73-1312965) $5,689,700.

It is very clear that EdReports, starting with its founding, is a billionaire sponsored organization.

EdReports rates curricula for their alignment to Common Core and the science of reading (SoR). In 2021, they gave both Lucy Calkins’s Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell’s reading curricula, which were the most widely used reading curricula in America, its lowest ratings.

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is another billionaire funded organization selling SoR. Among their 5 action plans they highlight EdRepors in plan four. NCTQ claims it addresses “the use of high-quality curricula aligned to the science of reading.” They advise schools to sign on with EdReports which reviews reading materials and lets client schools know about their alignment with SoR.

The NCTQ report declares that “only nine states require districts to select high-quality reading curriculum materials” (HCTQ) and noted that forward-looking states, like Arkansas, partner with EdReports. This is a really strange claim. Arkansas students were 42nd of 52 states in fourth grade reading on the 2024 NAEP testing and their 8th graders were 37th of 52. Nothing wrong with these scores but they do not scream “forward-looking.”

For the billionaires this is all about monetizing education and controlling the source of curriculum. A key driver for this corporate takeover is so called “High Quality Instructional Materials” (HQIM) and being certified as such by EdReports. Whenever the words “high quality” are used to promote something in education, it is a good bet that swamp land is being sold.

Amplify is an edtech company controlled by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. On the Amplify website the HQIM rating is described:

“States and districts across the country are focusing on materials that have been rigorously reviewed and deemed high-quality by EdReports.org, the leading third-party curriculum reviewer (or, in Louisiana, by a Tier 1 designation). EdReports defines high-quality instructional materials as materials that are closely aligned to rigorous standards and easy to use.”

A strange attribute of the EdReports saga is they are good at making pretty reports but do not have nearly the expertise many districts have for evaluating curriculum. Besides districts, many university education departments are much more qualified to evaluate curriculum. Here in my hometown, San Diego, we have at least three universities whose education departments fit the bill, but when there is enough money behind a company, reality becomes less significant.

One big problem facing public schools is people like David Steiner of John Hopkins University. He knows better but purposefully misleads people to sell HQIM. For example, in his recent article in ‘The 74’, he wrote:

“In 2022, 26% of eighth-graders performed at or above proficient on the NAEP in math, and 31% in ELA. While NAEP standards are more demanding than those in most states, what this means (conservatively) is that more than half of the students in an average American public-school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge.”

By implying that a proficient score which generally is seen as equivalent to B+ or A- is grade level instead basic which is about the same as a C, he claims “that more than half of the students in an average American public-school classroom lack grade-level skills and content knowledge.” In addition, he says that is a conservative estimate. The NAEP tests actually show more than 70% of America’s students are at or above basic which is grade level.

Some Final Words

David Steiner was supported into a leadership position in New York by billionaire Merryl Tisch. While at Hunter College, he was instrumental in establishing Relay Graduate School and served on its board of directors.

All of these billionaire lapdogs, support SoR. The reality is the there is no science involved with science of reading. It is based on a 1997 document search that did not include any original research and did not include all of the known reading domains.

SoR is mostly about privatizing and controlling curriculum.

Eric Hirsch in addition to leading EdReports (he plans to leave in July 2026) sits on the board of TPI-US. It is a private company selling teacher preparation as well as SoR. Their web site links to Emily Hanford’s 2022 “Sold a Story” here.

This is only a small slice of the billionaire spending to undermine and monetize public education.

We have a big problem in America. Billionaires have shown themselves unable to rationally, democratically and wisely administer these extraordinary assets. We need some form of tax driven redistribution of wealth if America is going to remain a democracy and save its treasured institutions like free universal public education. I suggest the top tax rate be raised to at least 65% and a wealth tax be applied; 5% (over $500 million in assets), 10% (over $1 billion in assets), 15% (over $50 billion in assets) and 20% (over $100 billion in assets). 

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Propaganda from The 74 and Johns Hopkins University

1 Aug

By Thomas Ultican 8/1/2023

The 74 recently ran an opinion piece, “America’s Education System Is a Mess, and It’s Students Who Are Paying the Price”. Author David Steiner, Executive Director of Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Education Policy, claimed, “The fundamental cause of poor outcomes is that policy leaders have eroded the instructional core & designed our education system for failure.” He was referencing the recent decline in math and reading scores on NAEP testing while ignoring “The Stolen Year” lost to a pandemic. Ironically, Steiner has been one of America’s most powerful education policy leaders for almost two decades.

The above graphs used NAEP Data Explorer, based on a 500-point scale, all scores fit within a 30-point range. Since 1992, reading and math scores have wiggled up and down on a small range. In 2022, almost all students missed one year of in-person instruction and in some states, like California, more than half the three years tested. If there had not been a dip in scoring, it would have been powerful proof about the uselessness of standardized testing.

Steiner claimed:

“When the recent NAEP long-term trend results for 13-year-olds were published, the reactions were predictable: short pieces in the national press and apologetics in education blogs. COVID-19, we were told, was continuing to cast its long shadow. Despite nearly $200 billion in emergency federal spending on K-12 schooling, students are doing worse than a decade ago, and lower-performing students are today less capable of doing math than they were 35 years ago.”

He linked an almost hysterical report in The 74 about the NAEP testing “CRISIS” and a Washington Post article, citing COVID-19 as a cause. “Apologetics” points to a post by former Assistant Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, who asserted:

“The release of the NAEP Long-Term Trend data yesterday set off the usual hysterical reaction. The scores fell as a consequence of the pandemic, when most kids did not get in-school instruction.

“These are not secrets but they bear repeating:

“*Students don’t learn what is tested when they are not in school for long periods of time.

“*Learning online is inferior to learning in-person from a qualified teacher.

“*It’s better to lose points on a test than to risk serious illness or death or infecting a family member or teacher or other member of the school staff.”

Steiner tried to both-side the issue, using Ravitch’s concluding question, “Will politicians whip up a panicked response and demand more of what is already failing, like charter schools, vouchers, high-stakes testing, and Cybercharters or will they invest in reduced class sizes and higher teacher pay?” His counterpoint was, “On the other [hand], their conservative critics point to lack of school choice, poor teacher preparation programs and (more recently) the woke invasion of classrooms.”

He seems to be speaking for himself.

Employing “woke” undermines credibility. “Woke” is a talking point, used by many GOP politicians but has no erudite meaning; it is baseless. He probably did not use CRT here because it is the worn-out 2021 unfounded attack on public education.

The opinion piece shows Steiner believes in a need to test students, younger than eight, and that standardized test scores should carry consequences for test takers. He is a big fan of high school exit exams, corporate style education standards and standardized testing. It can be inferred that he admired the “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to The Top” programs, foisted on America by Presidents Bush and Obama.

David Steiner

Escaping Nazism in 1940, David Steiner’s father, George Steiner, and his family emigrated from France to New York City. George met and married New Yorker, Zara Shakow, in 1955. They both became successful academics. He earned many honors and degrees, including a PhD from Harvard. She became an authority on international relations and served as vice-president for New Hall in Essex (UK). While living in Princeton, New Jersey, their son, David, was born in 1958.

Although birthed in the US, David grew up in Cambridge, England where he eventually attended the Perse School and earned a B.A. and M.A. from Balliol College Oxford University. Returning to America, he earned a political science PhD from Harvard University.

From 1999-2004, David served as a professor of education at Boston University and for two years, he worked at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2005, he was appointed Dean of Hunter College City University of New York.

Billionaire, Merryl Tisch, became Chancellor of New York State Board of Regents in 2009 and believed in standardized testing so strongly that Diane Ravitch dubbed her, the “doyenne of high-stakes testing.” Like the Heritage Foundation, she decried the government monopoly over public education and saw a like-minded educator in the Hunter College dean.

In 2008, Steiner created Teacher U at Hunter College, a new teacher preparation program, requested by charter school founders, Norman Atkins of Uncommon Schools, David Levine of KIPP charter school and Dacia Toll of Achievement First (Relay 59). This move coincided with Tisch’s thinking and the following year, she picked Steiner to be the New York State Commissioner of Education.

After he became Commissioner, the Board of Regents authorized independent teacher preparation graduate schools (Relay 60). It was a move to undercut the university-centered monopoly on education training that Tisch and he opposed.

In 2011, Teacher U became Relay Graduate School of Education. Steiner was a founding board member and is still on the board. Relay is a fraudulent school, privatizing teacher training.

Steiner bolstered his resume by supporting the neoliberal agenda, waiving the superintendent of schools job requirements, for Cathie Black, head of the Hearst magazine chain, to take over New York City public schools. Despite not having required teaching experience and professional degrees in administration, he claimed her “success” in business made her, in the words of Mayor Bloomberg, a “superstar manager.” She lasted on the job less than 100-days.

In an interview with Frederick Hess, Steiner proudly pointed to three policies he drove as Commissioner of Education: “commitment to standards-based curriculum”, “commitment to improved testing” plus “rethink and redesign teacher and principal certification.”

July 12, he was a guest speaker for a Pioneer Institute event. Pioneer Institute is affiliated with the very anti-public education State Policy Network. Recently appointed to Hoover Institute’s Practitioners Council, he serves with pro-privatization enemies of public education like Michael Horn, Patricia Levesque and Don Shalvey.

Johns Hopkins

In 1867, merchant, banker and railroad director, Johns Hopkins, bequeathed $7 million to establish America’s first research university in Baltimore. Since then, the private university has been a major success and boasts 29 Nobel Prize recipients. It is truly a world leader in medicine and the sciences.

It is sad to see billionaire dollars corrupting this respected institution and undermining public education. The following graphic shows some of the most virulent, anti-public education entities in America are supporters, listed on the Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Education Policy about page. From 2015-2018, the donor-directed Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a dark-money fund, sent $27,381,018 to Johns Hopkins.

Alum Michael Bloomberg is the largest donor to Johns Hopkins University. In 2018, he gave a whopping $1.8 billion to the school.

When neoliberal Democrats in Rhode Island decided to take over the Providence public school system, they contracted with Johns Hopkins to do a study. The school districts demographics were 65% Latinx, 16% Black, 9% White, 5% Asian, 4% Multi-racial and 1% Native American. In addition, 31% of students were multilingual learners, 16% received special education services and 55% came from homes where English is not the primary language. An unbiased study would have quickly revealed that the schools were not failing and the poor testing results reflect deep poverty, language learners and a large special education population.

The Johns Hopkins study was commissioned in May and presented in June. By July 19th, Mayor Elorza officially petitioned the state to take over schools.

Last year, The Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins wrote a joint paper with Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, calling for more testing.

When it comes to education, Johns Hopkins University has abandoned unbiased objectivity and joined a corrupted agenda.

The 74

The 74 was founded in 2015 by former CNN news anchor, Campbell Brown, along with Michael Bloomberg’s education advisor, Romy Drucker. Its original funding came from billionaires, Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Since then, it has been the vehicle for spreading the billionaire message, undermining public schools.

Campbell Brown, the original face of The 74, supported charter schools, opposed teacher tenure and was convinced schools were full of sexual predators. In response to a reporter, she stated,  

“I agree we have a point of view; it’s a ­nonpartisan point of view. It’s a clear point of view, and that is that the public education system, in its current form, is broken, and there’s an urgency to fix it.”

Public education is being molested by billionaires, for different reasons. It is not broken.

Some billionaires see the non-sectarian nature of public education as a threat to their dreams of a Christian theocracy. Others are libertarians that oppose free universal public education. They believe everyone should pay their own way and not steal other people’s property through taxation. Many are firmly convinced that education should be run like a business and respond to market forces.

None are experts in pedagogy nor have experience in running schools.

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Demise of Unbiased Education Research at Johns Hopkins

9 Jun

By Thomas Ultican 6/9/2021

The 2015 hiring of David Steiner to lead the new Johns Hopkins’s Education Policy Institute marked a transition from scholarship to neoliberal indoctrination. Donor directed funds that hide their sources and well-known advocates of testing and “school choice” have sent boatloads of money to the new institution. Steiner and his patron, Merryl Tisch, were famous in New York for being virulently pro-standardized testing and enemies of the teaching profession.

On April 1, 1996, New York Republican Governor George Pataki appointed Merryl Tisch to the State Board of Regents. On April 1, 2009 she was elected Chancellor by her colleagues. Tisch’s biography at the University at Albany states that since joining the Board she “has been a leading advocate for expanded alternate certification policies.” The rabbi’s daughter who married into one of America’s wealthiest families soon found a like minded pro-testing neoliberal to champion. The Regents selected Hunter College Dean, David Steiner, to be the new state Commissioner of Education.

In 2008, Steiner created Teacher U at Hunter College. It was a new teacher preparation program requested by the charter industry and coincided with Tisch’s thinking.  Steiner and Tisch believed that there was an unhealthy university based monopoly controlling teacher education. As Commissioner, he moved to weaken that “monopoly” in 2010 by granting “a provisional charter to authorize clinically-rich teacher programs to address shortages …”

The following year Steiner authorized and the state board approved non-institutions of higher education to grant master’s degrees in education accredited by New York State. Almost immediately, Teacher U became Relay Graduate School of Education and received accreditation from the state of New York. Steiner is also a founding board member of Relay and is still on its board of directors.

The other great policy agreement between Tisch and Steiner was on standards and test based accountability for teachers and schools. Tisch who has a doctorate in Education from Teachers College was honored by the school in 2013. That prompted education scholar Diane Ravitch to write that they were honoring the “doyenne of high-stakes testing.” In an interview with Frederick Hess, Steiner pointed with pride to three policies he drove as Commissioner of Education; “commitment to standards-based curriculum”, “commitment to improved testing” and worked to “rethink and redesign teacher and principal certification.”

Steiner completed his resume for supporting the neoliberal agenda by waiving the superintendent of schools job requirements in order for Cathie Black, head of the Hearst magazine chain, to take over New York City public schools. Despite not having the required teaching experience and professional degrees in administration, Steiner agreed that her “success” in business made her in the words of Mayor Bloomberg a “superstar manager.” She lasted on the job less than 100-days.

The Johns Hopkins Partnerships are Startling

The Education Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins proudly lists sixty-seven partners on their about page. The eleven shown above are representative of the array of public school “disrupters” and edtech profiteers with whom they partner.

Becoming an advocate for deep pocketed libertarians and neoliberals has led to a gusher of dollars. Between 2018 and 2020 the Overdeck Family Foundation states it has granted John Hopkins $840,000.

John and Laura Overdeck are relatively new to being education “disrupters” but they have caught on fast. John is a former hedge fund guy and vice president at Amazon. Laura has an MBA from Wharton, is a trustee of Princeton and is on the advisory boards of the Khan Academy, Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) and Stevens Institute of Technology. Their 2019 foundation tax form 990PF shows $627 million in assets.

Jeffery Epstein’s friend Bill Gates has been sending a steady stream of dollars. Although his giving is no longer transparent, his foundation tax forms show that between 2016 and 2018 he sent $2,194,000.

In 2006, two bay area foundations merged to form the multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley Community Foundation. It is a donor directed fund which allows wealthy individuals to secretly gift large sums of money without disclosure. From 2015-2018 they sent $27,381,018.

The Return on Investment

Basing themselves almost exclusively on testing data, a group of Democratic politicians including Governor Gina Raimondo decided to take over and reform Providence, Rhode Island’s “failing” public schools. The school districts demographics in 2019 was 65% Latinx, 16% Black, 9% White, 5% Asian, 4% Multi-racial and 1% Native American. In addition, 31% of students were multilingual learners, 16% received special education services and 55% came from homes where English is not the primary language. An unbiased study would have quickly found that the schools were not failing. Rather, the poor testing results were reflective of deep poverty, language learners and a large special education population.

“The situation was extreme,” says Ashley Berner, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. “I had never met so many dispirited students and teachers.” The Johns Hopkins study was commissioned in May and presented in June and by July 19th Mayor Elorza officially petitioned the state to take over the schools.

Last year, The Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins wrote a joint paper with Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. It called for more testing. They claimed,

“As leaders prepare their school communities for the challenge of re-starting face-to-face as well as hybrid models, a coherent pathway for learning recovery and acceleration needs to include greater reliance on high-quality materials and instruction, and completing the circle with curriculum-based assessments.”

“We recommend formative and summative assessments tied to specific curricula that can be implemented under various circumstances.”

Sadly, education scholarship at Johns Hopkins has been abandoned for much more than just “30 pieces of silver.”

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