Who is the philanthropic mastermind after Dr. Looney?

How learnings in Michigan may become lessons for Williamson County, Tennessee

PART II

By now you will have read of the secret plans to take down Williamson County Schools Director, Dr. Looney. The talk of the “ugly stuff” that is best kept out of the press.

This article seeks to examine one of the main protagonists, Kent R. Davis. It is intended to simply start the research for others to follow, and is by no means exhaustive or complete.

Kent R. Davis, Retired Engineer

Unlike most of his 23 colleagues of the Deaver Davis 24 group, little information is shared publicly by Davis. He apparently keeps a low profile, goes by the pseudonym or alias tennkengolf, and unlike the others mentioned in yesterday’s article does not have pictures pasted all over the Internet.

Davis, 75, records his principal abode in Franklin, Tennessee. The address is a quiet street in a “neotraditional” subdivision inside the boundaries of historic Franklin. Perhaps reminiscing of the past more than today, the Homeowners’ Association describe the setting as “located in a peaceful valley surrounded by gently rolling hills and centered by a large spring-fed lake form the pastoral setting . . . this location is close to everyday needs yet far removed from usual suburban living . . . with custom estate homes, cottage homes and manor style townhomes featuring meticulous landscaping, pool, sidewalks, tree-lined streets.” Sounds like a scene right out of the Truman Show or the 1950s Sears catalogs.

In any case, Davis appears to live a modest lifestyle that one might not normally associate with one of the largest political donors in Tennessee, and no doubt is a generous philanthropist to charitable causes, even if he has no known connections to Williamson County Schools other than the secret agenda. This author is only interested in Davis’ political intentions.

High Volume Campaign Financier

While yesterday’s sources included a broad set of contributions by Davis and others of his name, further investigation with the Federal Election Commission has revealed over 19 pages of contributions by Kent R. Davis of the exact address in Franklin. Those with a calculator can work out how close the 40-50 items listed in 2012 get to the Federal Contribution Limit, which of course don’t include his donations to State and local causes.

Google search finds many public sources of campaign financing by Mr. Davis

Beyond these Federal contributions, Davis also makes many State and local contributions. For example, he is the sixth largest single donor to Rep. Glen Casada, ahead of the Tennessee Society of Anesthesiologists, the Tennessee Bankers Association, Tennessee First, HCA, LifePoint, Pfizer, Comcast, and Tennesee Electric. As recently as October, he has filings with the Virginia State Board of Elections, so his influence and relationships likely reach well beyond Tennessee.

For motives, as any corporate executive with Davis’ background might tell you, past behaviors are often the best predictors of future. While some of his recent letters in the media may seem arrogant (e.g., he writes “over half of Americans cannot name either of their state’s senators”), it appears that Davis is not someone to take lightly.

Rather, one can see that Davis built a successful career with technology, manufacturing and management positions, previously working for the Dow Chemical Company and then a top conservative think tank in Michigan.

Davis has written and advised on global warming and environmental issues, published a study on Social Security privatization, and appeared in public forums on Urban Sprawl issues. Davis’ public writings, when analyzed using modern language analytic tools, are somewhat formal and consistent with politicians in the period 1860 — 1920. For fairness, we also evaluated this article and illustrated in the chart below.

His writings indicate he is articulate and very intentional in his positions. In fact, every article over the years is so precise and meticulously reasoned, that it is hard to imagine that when Mr. Davis wrote this week “the time for any ugly stuff should be done privately”, there is any doubt this is exactly what he meant — Do it. Just in private.

The Michigan Years

In Michigan from 1997 to 2005, Davis was known as one of the two key people in a free-market based, state “think tank” that provided public policy analysis. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, was well funded by ExxonMobil for focusing on Environmental Issues, albeit registered as a 501(c)3 non-profit. At the time, Davis described that he was very interested in the wetlands policy in Michigan.

While Davis’ public focus seems to be recorded as debunking global warming and privatization of public pensions, the Mackinac Center was perhaps best known in Michigan for its advocacy for public school privatization.

In 1988, the Mackinac Center was Michigan’s first institution to recommend charter public schools and in 1993 the Michigan Legislature subsequently enacted one of the first charter school laws in the entire nation.

The think tank was highly influential. Governor John Engler once wrote on State fiscal reform “… when the Mackinac Center speaks, we listen.”

The Wall Street Journal calls the Mackinac Center the nation’s “leading advocate for a universal education tax credit.”

Mackinac Center has a large media profile on school privatization

In fact, comparable to national powers such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C., and the Progressive Policy Institute, Davis’ think tank was one of the most prominent of the top thirty five identified as “a new breed of think tank” in the United States examining issues not only at the state, but for the first time at the county and local level.

The entry and running costs of such a think tank are known to be so high that very few groups are able to secure the necessary funding for just state and local issues, and so looking to corporations like ExxonMobil to fund environmental policy while it may seem like an oxymoron is an indicator of the master thinking at that time.

In fact, for a non-profit policy analysis unit, the think tank’s attempted reach extended far beyond an ivory tower. For example, the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation sued (unsuccessfully) ten county school districts and a county Education Association to move towards privatizing non-instructional functions.

Is Leona Group next for Williamson County?

Perhaps the most thought provoking part of the story is what has happened since in Michigan. The privatization train continued at full steam, and many schools in the State were outsourced to a national charter school operator called the Leona Group.

The process started with an academic debate of whether charter schools were really “corporate” or “franchise” schools, then some lawmakers started to predict that “privatization is a very real possibility”, and then supported by data from Davis’ Mackinac group, some districts moved to full outsourcing contracts.

Highland Park, Mich., resident and teacher Sylvia Culberson asks questions Wednesday during a packed meeting about turning over the city’s schools to Leona Group, a charter-school operator. The Detroit News

In fact, the Mackinac Center is currently taking this to the next logical conclusion and strongly advocating through media, videos and research for eliminating schools altogether. They plead “a new form of school choice — virtual learning — has the potential to revolutionize education in Michigan, improving outcomes for students and lowering costs.”

In the meantime, the Leona Group currently services more than 18,000 students in more than 60 “Leona Group schools” in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. This is not a local Michigan story, this is a national operator in five states and counting.

The Wall Street Journal Headline News

Unfortunately the results have not been as expected. Amber Arellano, executive director for The Education Trust-Midwest, said in a statement that “some of these operators’ student achievement levels are worse than our most struggling public school districts”.

While such debates are always controversial and so alone not sufficient, one only has to look at whether students, families, residents and teachers like it. They don’t seem to; Glassdoor finds that only 17% of the teachers and staff at Leona Group would recommend the operator to a friend.

In an interesting parallel to Williamson County, that may well have been learnings heeded by the Deaver Davis 24 Group when they state they will reverse Common Core in their district, the proponents of the outsourced experiment in Michigan and the Leona Group in particular claim that the issue is “the report’s use of statistics from the MEAP”. The MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) is the testing framework that is aligned with the State’s current content standards, which just so happens to be the Common Core.

Continue to PART III — The Extremists of Williamson County

Sources

1. Well Funded Conservative Group’s Secret Game Plan for Williamson County Schools, July 18, 2014 https://medium.com/@WilliamsonSecrets/well-funded-conservative-groups-secret-game-plan-to-for-williamson-county-schools-e2babb252899 accessed July 19, 2014
2. Email from Kent R. Davis (tennkengolf@comcast.net) 15, July 2014 4:15pmhttps://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1220/1*HNIAz5QlnmiN-qTx5N86ZA.png
3. Kent R. Davis Biography, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, July 2014 http://www.mackinac.org/bio.aspx?ID=101&show=bio&print=yes accessed July 19, 2014
4. The Federal Election Commission financial disclosures 2008-2012 http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/advindsea.shtml (search terms: Davis Kent Franklin 37064) accessed July 19, 2014
5. 19 Page Report from Federal Election Commission of Financial Disclosures 2008-2012 for Kent R. Davis of (address withheld for privacy reasons) Franklin TN 37064, http://www.scribd.com/doc/234507448/Kent-R-Davis-FEC-July2014 accessed July 19, 2014
6. Virginia State Board of Elections, Campaign Finance Reports, October 2013 http://cfreports.sbe.virginia.gov/Report/ScheduleA/29720?page=89 accessed July 19, 2014
7. Homeowners Association website About Page, accessed July 19, 2014 (link and name of subdivision withheld for privacy reasons, but in public record)
8. Google Search for “Kent R. Davis Campaign Money” executed July 19, 2014
9. Project VoteSmart for Rep. Glen Casada July, 2014, Top Contributors #6 http://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/48745/glen-casada accessed July 19, 2014
10. The Williamson Herald, March 25, 2009, Editorial by Kent Davis http://www.williamsonherald.com/editorial/article_f88f8b53-fa81-5661-a37d-ef6651cefb05.html accessed July 19, 2014
11. Politics of Fear Makes Bad Policy, Kent R. Davis, June 24, 2002 http://www.mackinac.org/4432 accessed July 19, 2014
12. ExxonSecrets Fact Sheet: Mackinac Center, Funding and Key People http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=50 accessed July 19, 2014
13. Think Tanks and Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action, James G McGann, Robert Kent Weaver, 2002 http://books.google.com/books?id=KEsr4yEGZEsC&lpg=PA611&ots=uzphfd1ML5&dq=kent%20davis%20mackinac%20center&pg=PA83#v=onepage&q=kent%20davis%20mackinac%20center&f=false accessed July 19, 2014
14. Saginaw Bay Watershed Memorandum 7 July 1999 http://web.archive.org/web/20050113183024/http://www.saginawbaywin.org/taskgrpnews/WildlifeSteward/jul99bird.htm accessed July 19, 2014
15. Mackinac Center Accomplishments 1998-2013 http://www.mackinac.org/18315 accessed July 19, 2014
16. School Choice in the Empire State, 2005 Mackinac Center Position Paper http://www.mackinac.org/7385 accessed July 19, 2014
17. Mackinac Center School Funding Myths Series 2011 http://educationreport.org/12610 and http://www.mackinac.org/archives/2011/Myths.pdf accessed July 19, 2014
18. Jurrians v. Kent ISD, 2010-11 Mackinac Center Legal Foundation http://www.mackinac.org/14187 accessed July 19, 2014
19. MLive Media Group mlive.com March 01, 2011 Mackinac Center suit against 10 Kent County districts and teachers union is dismissed http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/03/mackinac_center_suit_againt_10.html accessed July 19, 2014
20. MLive Media Group mlive.com September 27, 2011 Professor: Change name of charter schools to ‘corporate’ or ‘franchise’ schools because they are not what was intended http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2011/09/professor_change_name_of_chart.html accessed July 20, 2014
21. Huffington Post October 4, 2011, Michigan Public Schools Privatizing Teachers ‘Very Real’ Possibility, State Lawmaker Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/04/michigan-public-schools-p_n_994285.html accessed July 20, 2014
22. The Wall Street Journal, August 2, 2012 Michigan City Outsources All of Its Schools http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443545504577565363559208238 accessed July 19, 2014
23. A Virtual Learning Revolution by Mackinac Group, Vimeo Jan. 27, 2011 http://vimeo.com/19259130 accessed July 19, 2014
24. Leona Group Our Schools http://www.leonagroup.com/Pages-1016-2-Our_Schools_Landing_Page.htm accessed July 19, 2014
25. Failing charter operators keep expanding in Michigan, May 29 2013, The Education Trust MidWest http://www.edtrust.org/midwest/press-room/press-release/failing-charter-operators-keep-expanding-in-michigan accessed July 19, 2014
26. MLive Media Group mlive.com : Charter school operator Leona Group fires back over Education Trust-Midwest report criticizing its effectiveness May 25, 2013 http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/05/charter_school_operator_fires.html accessed July 19, 2014
27. Glassdoor Leona Group Profile Feb 16, 2014 http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Leona-Group-Reviews-E14615.htm accessed July 19, 2014
28. Education Week Blog June 30, 2014 http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2014/06/common-core_test_dropped_.html accessed July 19, 2014

https://twitter.com/WilliamsnSecret

Cover photo: Mastermind by Jason Samfield (license)

Williamson Secrets represents the views of an individual author publishing on medium.com. It is not associated with the Williamson County Republican Party, the Williamson County Democratic Party, Williamson Strong, or any candidate or group associated with state and local elections in Williamson County.

Corrections can be submitted on Twitter or to williamsonsecrets (gmail)