The Rockefellers’ Fundamental Transformation of American Education
The fundamental transformation of American education to serve a national workforce agenda began long before Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama announced on Oct. 30, 2008: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” 28
Almost immediately after the 2009 swearing in of Obama, the U.S. Department of Education introduced “college and career readiness” for all students as a national goal in its Race To The Top (RTTT) grant competition. 29 RTTT provided grant money to selected states to transform their education systems by adopting a common set of standards and assessments aligned to those standards, which were already conveniently available through participation in the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI). 30
Although RTTT’s “college and career readiness” for all students was unveiled as innovative, the plan to transform America’s K-12 schools from publicly funded, locally controlled education agencies into a national network of human resource development sites began more than a century earlier when John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (JDR, Sr.) established the General Education Board (GEB) in 1902 with an initial donation of $1 million. 31 JDR, Sr. used philanthropic “soft power” in the form of privately funded grants (a model for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others) to direct the course of American education to workforce development after the Civil War.
“Soft power” according to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, “is the ability to obtain preferred outcomes by attraction rather than coercion of payment.” 32 But it was after his youngest grandson, David Rockefeller, president of Chase Manhattan Bank, established the Trilateral Commission, that the Rockefeller family’s soft philanthropic power merged strategically with political power to accelerate the transformation process. 33
By capturing the White House, the power elite can work from the inside to get Congress to pass laws aligned with their agenda. This combined “smart power” fast-tracked the transformation of American education into a national human resource development system designed to monitor human development from cradle to grave as described in Marc Tucker’s 1992 letter to then-First Lady of Arkansas Hillary Clinton. Tucker sent the letter to Hillary at the Governor’s Mansion in Arkansas after her husband won the 1992 presidential election.
“America’s choice” or a Rockefeller agenda?
Marc Tucker, author of the “Dear Hillary” letter, was president of the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE) which was partially funded by the David Rockefeller/David Rockefeller, Jr. Trust. 34 David Rockefeller, Jr., vice-chairman of Rockefeller Family & Associates, was listed among the members of Tucker’s board of trustees on the “Dear Hillary” letter’s cover page, as was Hillary Clinton. 35 Also on the list of trustees was Bill Clinton’s friend, Ira Magaziner; both had been Rhodes Scholars at Oxford. 36 Magaziner chaired an NCEE commission that produced America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages (1990), a report that strongly criticized American worker training and advocated for youth-apprenticeship programs. 37 NCEE tapped Hillary to lead the effort to publicize the report. 38
In the letter, Tucker described an initial meeting he had with David Jr. and others in David’s office to discuss the plan they had for Clinton’s education agenda. Tucker described their shared belief that with Clinton’s election, “this country has seized its last chance.” (Perhaps he was alluding to Clinton as the last U.S. president who was a member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission). David Jr. was also listed as a contributor to NCEE’s report, “A Human Resources Development Plan for the United States” that included essentially the same content as the “Dear Hillary” letter. 39
The letter advised the future first lady on how Bill should prepare the public to accept their plan to fundamentally transform American education through incremental legislative steps and federal grants while conducting a propaganda campaign to garner public support for their radical agenda. He wrote:
Our idea is to draft legislation that would offer an opportunity for those states — and selected large cities — that are excited about this set of ideas to come forward and join with each other and with the federal government in an alliance to do the necessary design work and actually deliver the needed services on a fast track. The legislation would require the executive branch to establish a competitive grant program for those states and cities and to engage a group of organizations to offer technical assistance to the expanding set of states and cities engaged in designing and implementing the new system (emphasis added).
Establishing a “competitive grant program” and awarding grants to selected “states and cities to engage a group of organizations to offer technical assistance” are precisely the components of Obama’s RTTT program. Tucker described the rollout of the public relations campaign for his legislative agenda as a gradual two-pronged approach to avoid public backlash. He wrote:
- Radical changes in attitudes, values and beliefs are required to move any combination of these agendas.... [Bill Clinton] could start on the consensus-building progress this way, taking his message directly to the public, while submitting his legislative agenda and working it on the Hill. After six months or so, when the public has warmed to the ideas and the legislative packages are about to get into hearings (emphasis added), then you might consider some form of summit, broadened to include not only the governors, but also key members of Congress and others whose support and influence are important.
The role David Rockefeller, Jr. played in shaping Bill Clinton’s education policy through his association with Marc Tucker was not coincidental. While governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton became a member of David Rockefeller Sr.’s Trilateral Commission. 40 A month before the 1992 election, David Jr. wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “Why I Trust Clinton.” He opined:
- I have decided — as a father, a businessman, and a supporter of public education reform — to cast my vote for Bill Clinton.... When it comes to the intricate issues of systemic educational change, he understands the interlocking functions of technology, human development, school finance, educational equity, and public commitment that must undergird any successful human resource policy (emphasis added).” 41
The ideas David Jr. expressed in his article were the essential elements of Tucker’s “Dear Hillary” letter. The piece also promoted other socialist ideas such as universal health care and globalism. Although sitting presidents must relinquish their membership, Clinton’s involvement with the Trilateral Commission during his presidency is evident in his 1998 letter to David Rockefeller, Sr. congratulating him on the 25th anniversary of TC and in Clinton Presidential Library records. 42, 43
Presidential trilateral triumvirate and the Rockefeller education agenda
Clinton was the last of a triumvirate of presidents who were members of David Rockefeller, Sr.’s Trilateral Commission that included Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. 44 (Bush followed Carter as Reagan’s vice-president, wielding influence behind the scenes until his ascendency to the presidency in 1988). The education policies of the Carter-Bush-Clinton administrations, however, still propel the nationalization of American education that began with John D. Rockefeller, Sr. but which were dramatically accelerated when Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act in October of 1979. 45
The chart below depicts the Fabian Socialist-style incremental (evolutionary) building of the organizational structure and programs that David Rockefeller, Sr. admired during his university years. 46
The Carter administration’s Department of Education Organization Act established the administrative infrastructure of a national education system headed by a cabinet secretary. The Bush administration launched a campaign for a standards and accountability system that would begin the nationalization of instructional content and assessment with America 2000 and partner with corporations to fund innovative (i.e., progressive education) methods of delivery when Deputy Secretary of Education, former Xerox CEO David Kearns, launched the New American Schools Development Corporation. 47, 48 Clinton then used the Bush policies to further the Rockefeller agenda. 49
Author and education expert Sam Blumenfeld summarized how the accumulated effects of the Carter-Bush education policies culminate in the transformation of American education in the Clinton administration:
- Goals 2000 [an iteration of America 2000] is raw social engineering, intended to restructure all of American society and not just the schools. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act establishes a formal partnership between the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor. The grant money for this education-labor linkup is tied to compliance with requirements outlined in Goals 2000. It also mandates transforming public education into a glorified voc-ed system, more in line with a planned economy than a free economy (emphasis added). The Improving America's Schools Act is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 through which the Johnson administration opened the floodgates of the U.S. Treasury.... 50
The administrative infrastructure and national education goals developed throughout the Carter-Bush-Clinton administrations were preserved and enhanced in the G.W. Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind Act” then “perfected” in Obama’s Race to the Top grant program that funded states’ adoption of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. 51, 52
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