Campaign News

Progressive activists opposed to a Federal Reserve interest rate hike gained an influential new ally on Labor Day: The New York Times editorial board.

In a Monday editorial, entitled “You Deserve a Raise Today. Interest Rates Don’t,” the Times argued that if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in the near term, it could slow job creation at a time when there are still too few jobs to generate substantial wage growth. 

“Wage stagnation is a clear sign that the economy is not at full employment, which means it needs loose monetary policy, not tightening,” the Times wrote.

The Times called the Fed a “crucial player” in efforts to undo the decades-long trend of worker wages not growing in sync with the broader economy. The paper noted that from 1973 to 2014, median worker pay rose 7.8 percent while overall productivity increased by 72 percent, a finding published Wednesday in a report from the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. 

An interest rate hike would exacerbate, rather than reverse, this trend by slowing wage growth, the Times editorial suggested. The paper also said that an interest rate hike would send “the wrong signal of economic health,” undermining efforts by advocacy groups to raise workers’ wages through measures like increasing the minimum wage. 

It is unclear what impact the Times’ editorial will have on the Fed’s decision-making, but it is a high-profile boost for progressive activists and economists, who have long argued that a Fed interest rate hike should be tied to wage growth that is about twice as high as it is currently. 

These activists, led by the Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign, note that even as the official unemployment rate declined to 5.1 percent in August -- its lowest level since April 2008 -- wages have grown 2.2 percent in the past 12 months, only marginally outpacing increases in living costs. Since wages rise when demand for workers is high enough that businesses must compete for labor, many economists attribute ongoing sluggish wage growth to the number of people who are underemployed or have given up looking for work -- figures masked by the low official jobless rate. 

The Fed Up campaign sent a memo to newspaper editorial boards across the country on Sept. 1, asking them to oppose an interest rate hike in 2015. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, employs arguments that resemble those used by The New York Times. The memo warned that an interest rate hike in 2015 would "leave millions in considerable andunnecessary economic distress and would exacerbate troubling longer-term trends in wages and incomes for the vast majority of American workers and their families." 

Fed Up campaign director Ady Barkan celebrated the editorial, but stopped short of claiming credit for it. 

"The New York Times Editorial Board is right," Barkan said in a statement. "Workers do deserve a raise! The data is crystal clear – stagnant wages and the lack of inflation mean that the Fed shouldn’t raise rates anytime soon. The Fed Up campaign is of course glad that the Times and other leading voices are speaking up about this issue."

Fed officials have signaled for months that they plan to raise the current near-zero interest rates before the year’s end, but William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recently indicated that a September increase may be too soon in light of market fluctuations. The Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank body charged with adjusting key interest rates, will report on whether it plans to raise rates on September 17.

Supporters of an interest rate hike argue that it is necessary to head off excessive price inflation, which, along with maintaining full employment, is part of the Fed’s dual mandate.

Source: Huffington Post

Ask an education “reform” proponent about any issue facing public education and the answer is always the same: “school choice.” Whether they’re championing charter schools, vouchers or Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), advocates prefer to frame the debate around the right of parents to send their child to a better-performing school. This is merely a smokescreen to divert attention away from what school choice is really about: the transfer of public money to the private sector without accountability or transparency.

Many school choice campaigns are bankrolled by a faction of incredibly wealthy conservative donors and political groups, including the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (better known as ALEC). Their agenda is clear: dismantle public education.

But it’s a safe bet you won’t hear their names during National School Choice Week (Jan 25-30). What you will hear is a lot of people parroting messages about “freedom,” “innovation,” “options,” even “civil rights” – buzzwords that underpin the campaigns to expand charter schools, vouchers and ESAs across the country. But the jargon masks the devastating impact these policies have had on public education, particularly on those students who are supposed to benefit the most.

Unaccountable Charter Schools: The Truth Hurts

Many people support the idea behind charter schools, but how many are aware of the mounting troubles the charter industry has experienced lately? Probably not enough. Proponents work very, very hard to maintain a facade of success and transparency in the face of evidence that many of these schools operate without any oversight, while wasting taxpayer money and fostering inequity and racial segregation.

Take the North Carolina State Board of Education, which just this month rejected the Department of Public Instruction’s annual report on charter schools as “too negative.” Dominated by school privatization stalwarts, the board is determined to prevent any meaningful oversight of the state’s charters and demanded revisions to the report before it could be submitted to the legislature.

North Carolina educator Stuart Egan took the board to task in an open letter to Lt. Governor and board member Dan Forrest: “Overall, charter schools seem to lack diversity and operate under a different set of rules according to the report you are trying to squelch. The fact is that many of the charter schools you have enabled are perpetuating segregation and are not accomplishing what you advertised they would do,” Egan wrote.

Given the magnitude of waste and fraud in the sector, it’s unsurprising why many charter operators are hiding from accountability and regulation.  And according to a new study, the expansion of unregulated charter schools, particularly in urban communities, is beginning to resemble the effort a decade ago to pump up bad mortgages that eventually blew up the economy.

“Supporters of charter schools are using their popularity in Black, urban communities to push for states to remove their charter cap restrictions and to allow multiple authorizers,” Preston Green III of the University of Connecticut and co-author of “Are We Heading Toward a Charter School ‘Bubble’?: Lessons from the Subprime Mortgage Crisis” told EduShyster. “At the same time, private investors are lobbying states to change their rules to encourage charter school growth. The combination of multiple authorizers and a lack of oversight is creating an abundance of poor-performing schools in low-income communities.”

Vouchers: Who Is Really Benefitting?

According to the 2015 PDK/Gallup poll, a whopping 70 percent of Americans oppose school vouchers. They see it for what it is: a privatization scheme that subsidizes tuition for students in private schools. And perhaps they are aware that there is no conclusive evidence that vouchers improve student achievement. The public is also not fooled by the often-repeated falsehood that vouchers are primarily benefitting disadvantaged students.

In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and Mike Pence’s Indiana, where vouchers have expanded dramatically, promises that the programs would serve low-income students in failing schools didn’t last. “That tale quickly and methodically changed,” said Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association. By 2015,  only 2 percent of participants [in the voucher program] had attended an ‘F’ public school.

“The most expansive voucher program in America has become an entitlement program which, in large part, now benefits middle class families who always intended to send their children to private (mostly religious) schools and taxpayers are footing the growing bill,” Meredith said.

Education Savings Accounts (or Vouchers on Steroids)

In 2015, Nevada lawmakers were hoping to blaze a new trail for school choice with a new gambit, education savings accounts (ESA), which allow parents to claim more than $5,000 in state funds each year and use it for any qualified education expense. This includes religious-based private schools, but also a variety of other services, all with little or no oversight over student outcomes. In addition, states impose no quality controls on the textbooks, curriculum, tutoring, or supplemental materials that parents can purchase with ESA funds.

Education savings accounts exist in five states, but Nevada became the first to pass a bill that offered them to every public school student regardless of family income. Very few private schools in the state, however, have tuition low enough to be covered by the $5,100 or $5,700 provided annually by ESAs. Wealthier parents can supplement their own income to pay for the tuition, but for lower-income families private school will remain largely out-of-reach.

Earlier this month, a state judge slapped an injunction on the program. In his ruling, District Judge James Wilson said the law diverted public funds to pay for private school tuition and was therefore unconstitutional. The decision will be appealed because advocates have vested a lot in the scheme. ESAs are unquestionably the new school choice battleground and are being pushed in a growing number of states with proponents deploying the usual tropes about “freedom” and “flexibility” to mask their real impact: erosion of public school funding, fewer education resources, wider achievement gaps and increased segregation.

Real Innovation That Works

The good news is that a growing number of communities are finding solutions to struggling schools and achievement gaps that benefit all students, not just some. Educators and parents are working together to expand the community schools model, which is currently present in nearly 5,000 schools nationwide. When public schools extend services and programs beyond the school day, creating strong learning cultures and safe and supportive environments for both students and educators—in effect becoming community “hubs” – student outcomes improve. In 2015, Minnesota educators were instrumental in persuading the legislature to pass a bill creating a grant program for “Full-Service” Community Schools and other states may soon follow suit.  To learn more about community schools, read “Investing in What Works” by the Southern Education Foundation and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

Source: NEA Today

A lack of transparency and inadequate oversight can set up the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse.  A  2015 report from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy, entitled “The Tip of the Iceberg,” reported over $200 million lost to fraud, corruption and mismanagement in charter schools.

Read the full article here.

The California-based insurance company HealthNet agreed to cover a breathing assistance machine for Ady Barkan, a 34-year-old progressive activist afflicted with ALS, after his complaints about the company went viral on Twitter.

The company had initially refused to cover the costs of the machine on the grounds that it was “experimental,” according to Barkan.

Read the full article here.