A school board under attack.

• Author: Apple, Michael W.
• Position: Kenosha, Wisconsin

Reed Hastings, the billionaire owner of Netflix, made headlines this spring when he announced to the California Charter School Association that publicly elected school boards are the fundamental problems with school districts.

Hastings is one of the newest entries in the growing class of corporate billionaires heavily involved in education reform, from bankrolling charter schools to promoting their products in schools. Hastings has invested millions in the Rocketship Education charter school network and sits on the Rocketship board of advisors. Hastings is also a major investor in the for-profit software company DreamBox Learning, which provides the tech platform for most of Rocketship's math curriculum. The more Rocketship schools expand, the more DreamBox software sells, the more Hastings's shareholder value increases.

From this point of view, it makes sense that Hastings declares school boards, a "political instability," since they are subject to things like voters and community interests and public deliberation. For Hastings, school boards are a democratic nuisance blocking the real work of education: making sure that schools are run like businesses, while simultaneously lining the pockets of its corporate investors.

Through school boards, parents, students, and community members guide school policy and construct their own accountability systems. That's a far cry from the corporate model. While not perfect, as institutions of democracy, school boards have a deliberative function. This means decisions are made based upon the input and guidance from community members. It means that parents, educators, and students participate in the discussions about a district's policies and priorities. It means that the shape of public education is determined by the vision and beliefs of the community, not a corporate board or a mayoral appointee, and certainly not a corporation's bottom line.

Naturally, Hastings's comments raised eyebrows. People who believe in democracy were appalled by his comments, and people who don't believe in democracy were appalled by his candid disclosure of trade secrets. Generally, the people who don't believe in a robust democracy rely on tactics that are less vocally explicit than Hastings's to subvert democratic processes and corrode democratic institutions.

These tactics are proving to be more than a little successful in a number of places. Wealthy conservative political activists such as David and Charles Koch have...