Target 4.1: Free primary and secondary education
By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Primary and secondary schooling is overwhelmingly a public, government-financed function, so the core of this target sits with states. Publicly traded education companies shape it at the margin. Stride Inc., formerly K12, is a virtual charter operator that lobbied in 27 states in 2022 and channels indirect lobbying through the American Federation for Children and ALEC. SEIU trusts put lobbying-disclosure proposals on Stride's ballot in 2021 and 2023. The testing and publishing firms Pearson, ETS, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin spent at least $20 million on lobbying to expand the testing market. The Tax Justice Network's 2024 report argues that recovering revenue lost to tax abuse could put 72 million children in school. Shareholder votes on lobbying disclosure and tax conduct give owners a real lever. That lever operates at the margin of an outcome that governments must deliver.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation: Stride, Inc. stockholder proposal regarding a report on lobbying, SEIU Pension Plans Master Trust via SEC EDGAR, 2023-10-30
- Notice of Exempt Solicitation: Stride, Inc. stockholder proposal regarding a report on lobbying, SEIU Benefit Plans Master Trust via SEC EDGAR, 2021-11-15
- Pearson, ETS, Houghton Mifflin, and McGraw-Hill Lobby Big and Profit Bigger from School Tests, Center for Media and Democracy (PR Watch), 2015-03-30
- Stolen futures: the impacts of tax injustice on the Right to Education, Tax Justice Network, Education Out Loud and TaxEd Alliance, 2024-10-31
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed stockholder proposals at the online charter school operator Stride, Inc. asking it to report on its lobbying policies and its direct and indirect lobbying spending, and solicited support for them through exempt solicitations.
1 campaign on record
Report on the company's lobbying activities and expenditures, including payments to trade associations and tax-exempt groups that draft model legislation.
Result: 17,857,527 for, 18,249,329 against, 542,640 abstentions; the proposal was not approved
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.