How The Koch Brothers Are Buying Their Way Into TheMinds Of Public School Students

Public assistance harms the poor. Koch's program is doing," said Faith Boninger, a researcher basedat the University of Colorado, Boulder who writes about private companies in schools.

While Singer signed the memorandum of understanding before the Koch team developed YE into itscurrent form, he said the program's connection to the Kochs did not come up once as a cause forconcern during his 2008-2011 tenure. "Who doesn't like freedom -- and free stuff? Rack up pointsand score sweet goodies like T-shirts, posters, and games, including the highly coveted 'FreerPong,'" the website says. His deputy signed another memorandum renewing the program in 2010.Motivated by a desire to teach inner-city kids, he earned two education degrees at the University ofKansas before landing a job as a history teacher at Highland Park in 2011.

As Davis recalls, YE -- in its earlier, more basic iteration -- had "died out" at his school. The groupagrees to pay for all of the program costs in school districts where at least 40 percent of kids arepoor enough to be eligible for free and reduced-price lunches (but none of the costs in districtswhere fewer than 1 in 5 kids receives reduced-price lunches).

The struggling Topeka school district agreed to let YE train one new teacher a year and provideclassrooms. In addition to serving as Koch Industries' home base, the state has a public schoolsystem hungry for extra help: It's so underfunded that a few months ago the state's Supreme Courtdeemed school funding levels unconstitutionally low.

Singer saw YE as a welcome boon to the ailing school system -- the latest in a long string ofpartnerships that turned to outsiders to increase school resources for free. I chose to invest it ineducation," he said. So it isn't just a relatively small but growing high school program offered inKansas and Missouri. An offshoot in Atlanta, YE Georgia, reported being in 10 schools in the 2011-2012 school year. "What is the other side doing? How is the left trying to infiltrate the educationalsystem?" they discussed at a Jan. When Kevin Singer, then the superintendent of Topeka PublicSchools, signed a memorandum of understanding in August 2009 that expanded the YE programthere, he knew exactly who was funding the course -- and it didn't bother him one bit.

Kansas is a particularly ripe state for YE to target. "They [YE] were brought in as a nonprofit tobasically pitch and sell the curriculum," Davis said in an interview with HuffPost.

Birmingham saw Davis teach, and though he was not a business teacher, Birmingham told him he'dbe a good candidate for the YE course.

"When I watched him in a classroom, I could see students respond to him," Birmingham said. "Theidea that your actions and creativity could make you money right out of high school was a verysophisticated idea [for them] to latch onto."

In fact, Davis liked the program so much that he wants to bring it to Texas where he now works.

Before Davis taught the course for the first time in the fall of 2012, he spent an August week in abasement room at Koch Industries in Wichita, where he and about 20 other teachers learned fromYE staffers and veteran instructors how to teach the class.

YE supplied Davis with a syllabus, timeline and "all the handouts that you would need," he toldHuffPost. we don't care if it's a music teacher, but if it's a teacher who can motivate students, whocan move them from point A to B," Birmingham said. We're big on property rights. It was a verystudent-centered approach that they brought me, a lot of real-world, project-based activities."

Typical lesson plans included "developing your business idea" and the "invention game."

Many students reported enjoying the course, according to Davis, and he told HuffPost that he likedteaching it. "True or False: International trade should be heavily regulated for the good of acountry's economy," asked a quiz.

Answer the questions below to find out how "liberty-minded" you really are.

In February 2010, the Koch team who designed the course tested their libertarian curriculum with aone-semester class called "Market-Based Thinking" at the private Wichita Collegiate School. A pilotversion of the class would be offered the following spring to students at the Wichita CollegiateSchool, an elite private prep school in Kansas where Koch was a top donor.

First, the Koch team chose its mascot: a golden eagle holding a knife in its beak. There's an UrbanEconomics Academy, where students take bimonthly online economics classes on topics such as"relocation of businesses, suburban flight, minimum wage laws, constitutional rights, AffordableHealth Care Act, and many more!" A Rural Economics Academy tackles farming issues and is "opento anyone who has familiarity with rural landscapes and concepts." A Migrant Economics Academyexplores "the economics of immigration."

Luis Garcia, whose mother brought him to the U.S. YE was a perfect fit.

"Everybody got really excited when people would find out [I was] with Youth Entrepreneurs,"recalled Jon Bachura, then a Koch associate working on a different Koch Foundation project as wellas a YE official. According to the minutes of a February 2010 conference call, they concluded thatmarketers could "reference Koch Foundation," but "wouldn't mention it unless someone asks."

"We need to explain that we are part of a group that trains non-profit leaders and we are interestedin working to improve economic education," they continued. "I immediately said Taylor's our guy --he's energetic, he's young, students listen, he's garnered respect."

"We always say within our program ... "At the events you would see the name and the pictures ofthem, but I don't feel like the program was focused on Koch."

The Koch Industries headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, where Youth Entrepreneurs teachers receivetheir training. "You have to keep going through these failures to succeed. "We couldn't have donewhat we did in Topeka, in giving opportunities for kids, had we not had our business partners."

Youth Entrepreneurs states that it is specifically "targeted toward at-risk youth" in predominantlypoor school districts. Koch, the billionaire chairman of Koch Industries, is funding a public highschool course designed to turn young people into "liberty-advancing agents." (Photo: BoRader/Wichita Eagle/MCT via Getty Images)

In the spring of 2012, Spenser Johnson, a junior at Highland Park High School in Topeka, Kansas,was unpacking his acoustic bass before orchestra practice when a sign caught his eye. Rather, it'sbecause of "differences in the choices that men and women make."

Other Institute for Humane Studies videos on the syllabus inform students that the cost of living isn'tactually rising, that minimum wage laws harm workers and that the poor aren't "really gettingpoorer."

Davis also taught a series of classes based on videos by John Stossel, a lauded journalist turnedconservative commentator. "The objective was for us to learn something about project managementskills," she said, adding, "People weren't really interested in developing something new with us."How will they not be scared of it?"

To find "liberty-minded" teachers who might be predisposed to help them, the team reached out tothe network of libertarian groups that benefit from Koch family funding. The course would begin

that fall. Charles and his brother David Koch were longtime supporters of the Libertarian Partybefore becoming Republican kingpins. "Most teachers are really good at playing devil's advocate. Weknow all this because the Wu-Teach Clan used a Google group that it had left open to the public.

The emails show that Charles Koch had a hands-on role in the design of the high school curriculum,directly reviewing the work of those responsible for setting up the course. "It was always an amazingsupport that I had, multiple people I could have contacted," he said. Each event is assigned a pointvalue, and attendees can redeem the points for scholarship money or venture capital funding.

"That's right, the more involved you are, the more money you'll earn to put toward your business orhigher education!" reads the YE Academy homepage.

YE Academy courses are also closely tailored to fit the students they hope to draw. "From anentrepreneurial standpoint, we're big on free markets, of course. It rewards current students andalumni of YE for attending YE-approved lectures outside the classroom. In late 2009, the Koch groupmade a list of "common economic fallacies" that they believed should be repudiated. "Anti-gouginglaws don't do anything to address" shortages, the video's narrator argues. What the kids did absorbwere real-life examples and hands-on lessons -- the kind of approach that YE had been using sincethe early 1990s to teach basic business skills, like conducting market research or understanding abalance sheet.

Stephanie Linn, a member of the Wu-Teach Clan who now works at the Friedman Foundation forEducational Choice, told HuffPost that the associates' project had started out as little more than anexercise in nonprofit management. "I don't remember a focus on Koch Industries," Johnson said.Life's not perfect. "Charles has approved the initial draft," he wrote in an email.

Their thinking, laid out in a January project plan, was that "right-leaning private schools are morelikely to have teachers and students who would be supportive of and interested in our proposedlesson plans (the low-hanging fruit)."

"Economic philosophy is [what] we care most about: where prosperity comes from, what 'rules of thegame' are necessary for entrepreneurship, etc.," Woodlief wrote in an email. The videos areproduced and marketed under an institute arm called Learn Liberty, which offers dozens ofeducational videos on libertarian and conservative topics.

One such video Davis showed his students defended price-gouging. It's certainly one the Kochs werequick to replicate. "What you weigh against is, do I want to try and provide opportunities for kidsthat flat-out would not have them otherwise? They grew up in a very impoverished area. At theInstitute for Humane Studies, the Liberty Rising program begun earlier this year offers students"swag" in exchange for watching videos, the same ones Taylor Davis showed in his classroom.

The Liberty Rising marketing targets teens and young adults. He told HuffPost that he earned$2,000 in scholarship money from all the YE Academy points he racked up. For much of the past twodecades, YE offered little more than a pilot program teaching basic business skills -- and seemed anafterthought compared to the Kochs' massive investments in the political sphere. In the last schoolyear, the class reached more than 1,000 students across Kansas and Missouri.

Lesson plans and class materials obtained by The Huffington Post make the course's message clear:The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. He was not interested in lessonsabout creating business plans or spotting opportunities to make money -- "all the schlock that getstaught under the guise of 'teaching' entrepreneurship," the things that "defile the word

'entrepreneur,'" he wrote.

Woodlief declined to comment for this article.

But the pilot program's test results showed that the private school students weren't as receptive toovertly ideological messaging as the team had hoped. All of those things align with their [the Kochs']thoughts. Those are things that most entrepreneurs believe in."

Today, to teach its most controversial lessons, YE often relies on videos provided by the CharlesKoch-chaired Institute for Humane Studies, which operates out of George Mason University inVirginia. "YE definitely backed that up. I was always challenging them to stay on both sides ofeverything."

He supplemented the videos with worksheets and quizzes designed to reinforce the videos' claims."Give the right teachers the right curriculum [and] we can influence 'thinking teenagers,'" theywrote of their plan. "What if teachers are unwilling? What incentives do teachers have?" associateBethany Lowe wrote in an email, summarizing the discussion. Before the school year started, he wasgiven a thick binder of lesson plans, as well as flash drives containing quizzes and worksheets. Thegoal, the group said flatly, was to turn young people into "liberty-advancing agents" before theywent to college, where they might learn "harmful" liberal ideas.

The Koch Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

Charles Koch founded Youth Entrepreneurs in 1991 with his wife, Elizabeth Koch, who serves aschairman of the group's board. These included:

Corporatism v. He showed his students Stossel's six-part series called "Greed," which posits thatprivate companies are better at protecting the public than governments and nonprofits.

The next time his class met, Davis screened Stossel's film "Is America Number One?" in whichStossel concludes that laissez-faire economics are the key to global prosperity.

Davis said he presented these videos as simply one perspective among many. "Relationships withteachers will be essential, as they will be the key conduits for getting the curriculum into theschools," they wrote in a December 2009 document describing their goals.

According to notes from a meeting with Koch associates in January 2010, executives from Koch-

funded groups were concerned about how teachers might view the course. Low taxes and lessregulation allow people to prosper. After Davis' first year at Highland Park, Vernon Birminghamapproached him and his principal about bringing the course back. "We have access to a thousandhigh school-aged students a year. We will talk about state standards, language that ties intoeconomic education, etc. Vernon Birmingham, YE's director of curriculum and teacher support, toldHuffPost that the course will be in 42 schools in the coming school year. "Ultimately, we hope thiswill change the behavior of students who will apply these principles later on in life."

From the outset, the Koch associates identified the importance of recruiting teachers who wouldsupport the program's goals. Koch Foundation launched an important project with Charles Koch'sblessing: They would design and test what they called "a high school free market and liberty-basedcourse" with support from members of the Koch family's vast nonprofit and political network. Thatyear, its platform proposed a drastic revision of the American education system: "We advocate thecomplete separation of education and state. "Without the knowledge or affinity for free markets,students cannot appreciate the role that free markets play in laying the foundations for prosperityand freedom in society."

"We don't try to push or drive ideology," Birmingham, the YE official, told HuffPost. Lowe could notbe reached for comment for this story.

Taylor Davis, the teacher in charge of the YE course at Highland Park High School, was one suchKoch recruit. But it was actually run by Youth Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit group created and fundedprimarily by Charles G. Especially in the business world, it's hard."

While Johnson was absorbing information about free markets, the class's sponsors maintained amore subtle presence. It's part of a larger mission.

"Everybody that's interested in liberty-minded higher education and beyond is really excited aboutYouth Entrepreneurs," Jon Bachura told HuffPost, adding, "It's all playing in the sandbox to see whatthings, what activities answer that question: What creates the liberty mindset?"

"All the power is yours," Tony Woodlief imagined teachers telling their students. We want to steerclear from saying Koch Foundation."

As it turns out, they needn't have worried so much. His school board voted unanimously for theprogram. they might never, ever even know that engineering is a choice for them."

As the Kochs and their team continue to expand programs like YE, they're also gathering valuableinformation about how kids learn and what motivates them -- data they apply to other initiatives.

One of the fastest growing elements of YE is a program designed to keep students engaged in whatis referred to across Koch-funded platforms as "the liberty movement" long after they finish thecourse. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should beended."

In recent years, through private charitable foundations, the Koch brothers have funneled tens ofmillions of dollars to colleges and universities -- most recently, a $25 million donation to the UnitedNegro College Fund. 12, 2010, meeting, according to notes in the Google group.

"We are operating under the assumption that high-school students do not receive an education thatgives them an understanding and an affinity toward free markets," the Wu-Teach Clan stated in a

project plan on Jan. The larger Koch effort pushes forward with think tanks, university programs andteacher seminars as well.

But with YE, the Koch pipeline for creating a newgeneration of liberty advancers now starts early: A studentcan take the YE course in high school, participate in the YEAcademy to earn scholarship money and then use thatmoney to pay for a degree from a Koch-funded university.Many of these groups, including the Institute for HumaneStudies, the Bill of Rights Institute and the Market-Based

Management Institute, host seminars and conferences specifically for teachers, and they were happyto help the team.

"Send me the language you want, I'll send it to our list!" wrote a marketing director at the Institutefor Humane Studies in February 2010. 21, 2010. Birmingham helped convince the school, Davisrecalled, that his teaching the class "was cool." (Similarly, Georgia's YE offshoot advertises itself toteachers by saying "CTAE [Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education] Certification NOTRequired.")

YE's course materials reflect some of the initial thinking by the Koch associates charged withdesigning the course. David Koch won the party's nomination for vice president in 1980. He put themoney toward his studies at the University of Southern California, where he is currently a risingsophomore.

"I didn't get capital for a business, but the capital that I did receive ... In 2012, its assets topped$1.45 million. A marketing employee at the Bill of Rights Institute said, "I would love to chat withyou to help in any way possible with your project."

In addition, the Koch associates suggested looking for teachers who might be persuaded to teach thecourse. They are also funding advocacy groups that are waging a widespread campaign to fight theCommon Core State Standards, a set of benchmarks for public K-12 education adopted by moststates. Spenser Johnson, who is currently studying criminal justice as a rising sophomore at EmporiaState University in Emporia, Kansas, said he enjoyed the course and learned a lot.

"It teaches you sometimes you do have failure in business," he told HuffPost. Students would receivegenerous financial incentives including startup capital and scholarships after graduation. "If peoplewho make very little money have modern conveniences, are they really poor?" one worksheet asked.from Mexico in search of a better education, took part in the Migrant Economics Academy as asenior in high school, one year after he took the YE class. Rather than create a standalone class oneconomic philosophy, as they had initially planned, the team proposed that they revise existingKoch-funded education programs to include more libertarian teachings. Teachers are trained atKoch Industries headquarters and are required to read Charles Koch's book The Science of Success.

The focus on high school students is a key part of the Kochs' long-term effort to create a libertarian-minded society from the ground up.

"We hope to develop students' appreciation of liberty by improving free-market education," the Kochassociates wrote during the program's initial planning stages. A first-year teacher at the time, Davishad received his public school education in affluent Olathe, Kansas. It speaks to the absurdity of the

Wu-Teach Clan name."

With what they had learned at Wichita Collegiate, however, the Koch team took the next step,according to the group's emails. In order to view the swag, users must provide a wealth ofinformation to the Institute for Humane Studies.

Youth Entrepreneurs is just one piece of the Kochs' slow creep into America's schools. Dole offerslesson plans to elementary school teachers that are filled with positive messages about eating fruitsand vegetables -- messages that also benefit the food company's bottom line.

The Society for Petroleum Engineers, together with Utah's Department of Natural Resources, oncesponsored an Earth Day poster contest that asked students, "Where Would We Be Without Oil, Gas &Mining?"

"It's the same model that ... So he was grateful for YE's course materials and training. But YE is themost direct example of their growing imprint on American classrooms.

Koch-funded think tanks provide many of YE's course materials. Free-market Capitalism

Deregulation is what caused recession in 80s, Economic problems of today

Rich get richer at the expense of the poor

FDR/New Deal brought us out of the depression

Government wealth transfer programs help the poor

Private industry incapable of doing functions that public sector has always done

Unions protect the employees

People with the same job title should be paid the same amount ...

Minimum wage, "living wage," laws are good for people/society

Capitalist societies provide an environment for greed and materialism to flourish

Socialist countries do just fine, people have great lives there (using this as proof that socialismworks

They aimed to "inoculate" students against liberal ideas by assigning them to read passages fromsocialist and Marxist writers, whom they called "bad guys." These readings would then be comparedto works by the "good guys" -- free-market economists like Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises.

Members of the Koch team viewed their mission as a race against the progressive left. But the Kochshave renewed their focus on YE in recent years, pumping millions of dollars into it, expanding itconsiderably and molding it to project their worldview.

In 2007, YE reported assets of just over $450,000. Koch. (Photo: Larry W. Another video titled "IsThere a Glass Ceiling?" asserts that the gender pay gap is a myth. They aimed to measure thecourse's effectiveness in terms of "changing attitudes and behavior," which they acknowledged

would be "hard work."

Before teaching the class, Tony Woodlief, who oversaw the Wu-Teach Clan's education project,wrote that he would "need to run by CGK for approval," referring to Charles G. Since 2012, YE hasalso launched three major new initiatives: an online version of its course, an affiliate program to helprural schools access the class, and an after-school program, YE Academy, which served more than500 students in its first year.

With spending on public education under heavy assault -- in large part by Koch-funded organizationsand politicians they support -- the nation's poorest school districts are in desperate need ofresources, making the free Koch curriculum an attractive alternative to nothing.

While the Kochs are perhaps best known for their support of conservative political candidates andcauses, they have a longstanding interest in education. "Economics is so complex and I was never anexpert on economics," he said. He came across the organization when teachers involved in anentrepreneurial club brought YE materials to his attention.

"If you can generate revenue outside of taxation, that's a positive thing," said Singer, who is nowexecutive director of the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit, a Pennsylvania agency thatprovides budgeting, human resources, curriculum and other services to local school districts. "Doyou want to make money?" it asked.

The poster encouraged the predominantly poor students at Highland Park to enroll in a new,yearlong course that would provide lessons in basic economic principles and practical instruction onstarting a business. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.

Though YE has avoided the public spotlight, the current structure of the program began to takeshape in November 2009, documents show, when a team of associates at the Charles G. They hashedout a strategy to infiltrate public schools after surveys showed that the wealthy prep school studentslargely failed to absorb their libertarian message. The group dubbed itself the "Wu-Teach Clan."

Over the next six months, members of the Wu-Teach Clan exchanged hundreds of emails with oneanother and with Koch lieutenants. Davis posted many of these resources online, offering the publica rare glimpse inside the highly structured curriculum.

Teachers participate in a Youth Entrepreneurs training session in 2012. They always wanted to talkto me or my colleagues about, 'What are you doing?' or 'How are you doing it?'" Bachura now worksfor U Inc., an online training company.

At the time the Koch associates turned to it, the YE program was already in the midst of"transitioning to teach more economics," according to notes of a 2010 conversation between theKoch team and YE staff, which meant that YE "may be more willing to incorporate it into their lessonplans."

Nowadays, YE's classes have all the ideological trappings of "Market-Based Thinking" -- but insteadof the politics being served straight up, it's baked into lessons about how to build a business.

The mix of practical and theoretical instruction seems to have worked well for YE. "What will you doto make your country wealthy? How will you produce entrepreneurs and get them working on thethings that matter?"

Editor's Note: The publicly accessible archive for Taylor Davis' curriculum was taken down followingthe publication of this article; links to the site have been replaced with those for an archive of thatmaterial.

. Charles Koch's book The Science of Success is visible on the table.

As a history teacher, Davis had no background or accreditation in teaching business. We really lookfor teachers who are able to motivate and move students, move the needle."

Birmingham would become a frequent presence in Davis' classroom, keeping tabs on his lessonsfrom the back of the room. "He would be out there quite a bit, coming into the classes," Davis said.They also assigned each other nicknames: Ol' Mucky Terrahawk, Mighty Killer, Big Gay Mule,Midnight Bandit and Erratic Assassin. Koch, the billionaire chairman of Koch Industries.

The official mission of Youth Entrepreneurs is to provide kids with "business and entrepreneurialeducation and experiences that help them prosper and become contributing members of society."The underlying goal of the program, however, is to impart Koch's radical free-market ideology toteenagers. We're big on voluntary trade. The lion's share of this growth was fueled by Koch familyfoundations.

During the 2012-2013 school year, YE's credit-bearing class reached more than 1,000 students in 29schools in Kansas and Missouri, according to the group's annual report. And in 2012, the districtexpanded the program to more schools and tied it to an engineering scholarship program withWestar Energy, a Kansas utility company.

"There's no way you can do these kinds of things on your own," Singer told HuffPost. "He was theguru of the Topeka region when I was there."

As Davis saw it, the purpose of the course was to teach teens how to become self-sufficient smallbusiness owners.

"He introduced it as giving kids real-world opportunity," Davis said of Birmingham. YE would pay theteachers a stipend above their regular salary, supply them with classroom materials, arrange guestspeakers and field trips, and provide students with scholarship opportunities, all at no cost to theschool district.

Such public-private partnerships are a growing trend in the American education system, ascorporations and interest groups come up with ever more innovative ways to market their productsand ideas to students in school buildings.

In her book Born to Buy, author Juliet Schor recounts how General Mills paid Minnesota teachers$250 each to paint cereal logos on their cars and park them next to school buses. "They're excitingand they're passionate -- teachers who tell us that if they could teach YE all day, they would. Womenearn around 75 cents for every dollar earned by men, it says, but not because of discrimination inthe labor market. "Basically, it is important for us to establish credibility by what we know, not whowe know. "You see students who are C or D level ... There were also videos, PowerPointpresentations and scores of documents in Microsoft Word. who are so bright and the traditionalschool system isn't working for them," Davis said, describing the program's appeal. "It wasoverwhelming," he said. Johnson eagerly signed up.

In some ways, the class looked like a typical high school business course, taught in a Highland Parkclassroom by a Highland Park teacher.

Charles G. "It was a significant amount as to what my parents had to pay."

The success of the YE Academy -- over 500 students took part in the first year -- suggests thatoffering tangible incentives to young people in exchange for consuming ideological offerings couldbe a winning formula, better than the Wichita Collegiate class at least. Launched in 2012, the YEAcademy runs what it calls "economic 'think tanks' for high school students."

The academy relies on the same incentive that initially drew kids to YE: the chance to earn extramoney. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choiceof individuals. In December 2009, Woodlief had good news for the group. Smith/AP)

In preparing to expand their course to schools beyond Wichita Collegiate, the Koch associatesworried about the optics of being known as a Koch-funded group. If you didn't have somebody [likeWestar or YE] come in ... We go on both sides of the fence. "Younger teachers might be more open tonew ideas," Lowe wrote in the January 2010 meeting minutes