Zara Employee Humiliated By Managers For Her Braids
Zara Employee Humiliated By Managers For Her Braids
Twenty year-old Zara employee, Cree Ballah from Toronto, Canada, has spoken out after she was recently humiliated by two of her managers for having what the fashion chain staff members deemed an ‘...
Twenty year-old Zara employee, Cree Ballah from Toronto, Canada, has spoken out after she was recently humiliated by two of her managers for having what the fashion chain staff members deemed an ‘inappropriate’ hairstyle.
Ballah, who is of African American decent, was wearing four box braids pulled into a low, simple ponytail when she was reprimanded.
Originally, the young sales assistant was told by a manager that her hair was not in keeping with Zara’s image, telling her, “We’re going for a clean professional look with Zara and the hairstyle you have now is not the look for Zara.”
Afterwards, another manager pulled Ballah aside, lead her out of the store and attempted to ‘fix’ her hair in the middle of the crowded mall, leaving the Zara employee feeling humiliated and offended.
“My hair type is also linked to my race, so to me, I felt like it was direct discrimination against my ethnicity in the sense of what comes along with it,” Ballah told CBC News in a recent interview.
“My hair type is out of my control and I try to control it to the best of my ability, which wasn’t up to standard for Zara.”
This isn’t the first time the Spanish retail giant has been in hot water for its questionable treatment of employees. Last year, a survey conducted by the Center for Popular Democracy (CDP) found Zara was demonstrating racial bias not only towards its employees but its customers as well.
The report established darker-skinned employees were far less likely to get a raise or be promoted and were twice as unhappy with their working hours compared to their fairer-skinned peers. As well as this, the report discovered employees were trained to report ‘special orders’ to in-store management.
‘Special orders’ are considered to be suspicious looking customers who, after being reported, are tailed by a Zara staff member to ensure no items are stolen. Results uncovered the majority of employees used the code on African American and Latino shoppers, and, according to the CPD survey, an actual member of staff of African American decent was deemed as a ‘special order’ when entering the store on his day off to collect a paycheque.
Adding insult to injury, the brand released a line of shirts emblazoned with the slogan ‘White Is The New Black’ on them in 2014, causing public outcry for their racially insensitive message.
And while the fashion chain has continued to escape largely unscathed under pleas of ignorance, its run-in with Ballah may be the final straw, with the ex-staffer currently pursuing her options, which include taking the issue to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
By Isabelle Gillespie
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A Job Guarantee and the Federal Reserve Board
A Job Guarantee and the Federal Reserve Board
The idea that the government would commit itself to act as an employer of last resort and guarantee a job to everyone has been getting more attention in recent months. While many on the left have...
The idea that the government would commit itself to act as an employer of last resort and guarantee a job to everyone has been getting more attention in recent months. While many on the left have long pushed this position, the Clinton-linked Center for American Progress (CAP) recently embraced the idea in a conference last week. It is good to see ideas outside of the mainstream getting attention, but there are a couple of issues worth keeping in mind to ensure that the effort does not end up being counterproductive.
The first is to recognize that a job guarantee is a huge lift, not only politically but in its implementation. In effect the guarantee is not only going to be providing jobs to workers who do not currently have one, but it will also end up offering a potentially more attractive alternative to millions of people now in low-wage jobs. How attractive the alternative is will of course depend on the wage offered in the government supported jobs.
Read the full article here.
Hundreds expect to be arrested during D.C. health care protest
Hundreds expect to be arrested during D.C. health care protest
After Senate Republicans’ failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week, hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to urge their representatives to scrap...
After Senate Republicans’ failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this week, hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Capitol Hill Wednesday to urge their representatives to scrap future attempts to scuttle the health care laws and back universal coverage instead.
Of those who attended the protest, “about 600 or so people” had signed up expressing they were willing to be arrested, according to Jennifer Epps-Addison, president and co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the groups that planned the protest. “A few hundred more” came as supporters and legal observers, she said.
Read the full article here.
The Great Charter School Rip-off: Finally, the Truth Catches Up to Education “Reform” Phonies
Salon - October 2, 2014, by Jeff Bryant - Last week when former President Bill Clinton meandered onto the topic of charter schools, he mentioned something about an “original bargain” that charters...
Salon - October 2, 2014, by Jeff Bryant - Last week when former President Bill Clinton meandered onto the topic of charter schools, he mentioned something about an “original bargain” that charters were, according to the reporter for The Huffington Post, “supposed to do a better job of educating students.”
A writer at Salon called the remark “stunning” because it brought to light the fact that the overwhelming majority of charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. Yet, as the Huffington reporter reminded us, charter schools are rarely shuttered for low academic performance.
But what’s most remarkable about what Clinton said is how little his statement resembles the truth about how charters have become a reality in so many American communities.
In a real “bargaining process,” those who bear the consequences of the deal have some say-so on the terms, the deal-makers have to represent themselves honestly (or the deal is off and the negotiating ends), and there are measures in place to ensure everyone involved is held accountable after the deal has been struck.
But that’s not what’s happening in the great charter industry rollout transpiring across the country. Rather than a negotiation over terms, charters are being imposed on communities – either by legislative fiat or well-engineered public policy campaigns. Many charter school operators keep their practices hidden or have been found to be blatantly corrupt. And no one seems to be doing anything to ensure real accountability for these rapidly expanding school operations.
Instead of the “bargain” political leaders may have thought they struck with seemingly well-intentioned charter entrepreneurs, what has transpired instead looks more like a raw deal for millions of students, their families, and their communities. And what political leaders ought to be doing – rather than spouting unfounded platitudes, as Clinton did, about “what works” – is putting the brakes on a deal gone bad, ensuring those most affected by charter school rollouts are brought to the bargaining table, and completely renegotiating the terms for governing these schools.
The “100 percent charter schools” education system in New Orleans that Clinton praised was never presented to the citizens of New Orleans in a negotiation. It was surreptitiously engineered.
After Katrina, as NPR recently reported, “an ad hoc coalition of elected leaders and nationally known charter advocates formed,” and in “a series of quick decisions,” all school employees were fired and the vast majority of the city’s schools were handed over to a state entity called the “Recovery School District” which is governed by unelected officials. Only a “few elite schools were … allowed to maintain their selective admissions.”
In other words, any bargaining that was done was behind closed doors and at tables where most of the people who were being affected had no seat.
Further, any evidence of the improvement of the educational attainment of students in the New Orleans all-charter system is obtainable only by “jukin the stats” or, as the NPR reporter put it, through “a distortion of the curriculum and teaching practice.” As Andrea Gabor wrote for Newsweek a year ago, “the current reality of the city’s schools should be enough to give pause to even the most passionate charter supporters.”
Yet now political leaders tout this model for the rest of the country. So school districts that have not had the “benefit,” according to Arne Duncan, of a natural disaster like Katrina, are having charter schools imposed on them in blatant power plays. An obvious example is what’s currently happening in the York, Pennsylvania.
School districts across the state of Pennsylvania are financially troubled due to chronic state underfunding – only 36 percent of K-12 revenue comes from the state, way below national averages – and massive budget cuts imposed by Republican Governor Tom Corbett (the state funds education less than it did in 2008).
The state cuts seemed to have been intentionally targeted to hit high-poverty school districts like York City the hardest. After combing through state financial records, a report from the state’s school employee union found, “State funding cuts to the most impoverished school districts averaged more than three times the size of the cuts for districts with the lowest average child poverty.” The unsurprising results of these cuts has been that in school districts serving low income kids, like York, instruction was cut and scores on state student assessments declined.
The York City district was exceptionally strapped, having been hit by $8.4 million in cuts, which prompted class size increases and teacher furloughs. Due to financial difficulties, which the state legislature and Governor Corbett had by-and-large engineered, York was targeted in 2012, along with three other districts, for state takeover by an unelected “recovery official,” eerily similar to New Orleans post-Katrina.
The “recovery” process for York schools also entailed a “transformation model” with challenging financial and academic targets the district had little chance in reaching, and charter school conversion as a consequence of failure. Now the local school board is being forced to pick a charter provider and make their district the first in the state to hand over the education of all its children to a corporation that will call all the shots and give York’s citizens very little say in how their children’s schools are run.
None of this is happening with the negotiated consent of the citizens of York. The voices of York citizens that have been absent from the bargaining tables are being heard in the streets and in school board meetings. According to a local news outlet, at a recent protest before the city’s school board, “a district teacher and father of three students … presented the board with more than 3,700 signatures of people opposed to a possible conversion of district schools to charter schools,” and “a student at the high school also presented the board with a petition signed by more than 260 students opposed to charter conversion.” Yet the state official demanding charter takeover remains completely unaltered in his view that this action is “what’s bets for our kids.”
What’s important to note is York schools are not necessarily failures academically, as New Jersey-based music teacher and education blogger going by the name Jersey Jazzman stated on his personal blog. Looking at how the districts’ students perform on state assessments, he found that academic performance levels were “pretty much where you’d expect them to be” based on the fact that “most of York’s schools have student populations where 80 percent or more of the children are in economic disadvantage,” and variations in student test score performance almost always correlate strongly with students’ financial conditions. He concluded that what was happening to York schools more represents a “long con” in which tax cuts and claims of “budgetary poverty” have prompted a rapacious state government to “declare an educational emergency, and then let edu-vultures … pick at the bones of a decimated school system.”
The attack on York City schools is not unique. As an official with the National Education Association recently pointed out on the blog Living in Dialogue, “It’s the same story that played out in Detroit, Flint, and Philadelphia where these ‘chief recovery officers’ or ‘emergency managers’ have all made the same recommendation: to hand over the cities’ public schools to the highest private bidder.”
Then, hiding behind pledges to do “what’s best for kids,” these operators too often do anything but.
Charter Schools Takeover, Corruption Ensues
York teachers and parents have good reasons to be wary of charter school takeover. As a new report discloses, charter school officials in their state have defrauded at least $30 million intended for school children since 1997.
The report, “Fraud and Financial Mismanagement in Pennsylvania’s Charter Schools,” was released by three groups, the Center for Popular Democracy, Integrity in Education, and ACTION United.
Startling examples of charter school financial malfeasance revealed by the authors –just in Pennsylvania – include an administrator who diverted $2.6 million in school funds to a church property he also operated. Another charter school chief was caught spending millions in school funds to bail out other nonprofits associated with the school. A pair of charter school operators stole more than $900,000 from the school by using fraudulent invoices, and a cyber school entrepreneur diverted $8 million of school funds for houses, a Florida condominium, and an airplane.
What’s even more alarming is that none of these crimes were detected by state agencies overseeing the schools. As the report clearly documents, every year virtually all of the state’s charter schools are found to be financially sound. The vast majority of fraud was uncovered by whistleblowers and media coverage and not by state auditors who have a history of not effectively detecting or preventing fraud.
Pennsylvania spends over a billion dollars a year on charter schools, and the $30 million lost to fraud documented in this study is likely the minimum possible amount. The report authors recommend a moratorium on new charter schools in the state and call on the Attorney General to launch an investigation.
The report is a continuation of a study earlier this year that exposed $100 million in taxpayer funds meant for children instead lost to fraud, waste, and abuse by charter schools in 15 states. Now the authors of the study are going state-by-state, beginning with Pennsylvania, to investigate how charter school fraud is spreading.
What’s happening to York City is not going to help. The two charter operators being considered for that takeover – Mosaica Education, Inc., and Charter Schools USA – have particularly troubling track records.
According to a report from Politico, after Mosaica took over the Muskegon Heights, Michigan school system in 2012, “complications soon followed.” After massive layoffs, about a quarter of the newly hired teachers quit, and when Mosaica realized they weren’t making a profit within two years, they pulled up stakes and went in search of other targets.
As for the other candidate in the running, Charter Schools USA, a report from the Florida League of Women Voters produced earlier this year found that charter operation running a real estate racket that diverts taxpayer money for education to private pockets. In Hillsborough County alone, schools owned by Charter Schools USA collaborated with a construction company in Minneapolis, M.N. and a real estate partner called Red Apple Development Company in a scheme to lock in big profits for their operations and saddle county taxpayers with millions of dollars in lease fees every year.
In one example, cited by education historian Diane Ravitch, Charter USA’s construction company bought a former Verizon call center for $3,750,000, made no discernible exterior changes except removal of the front door and adding a $7,000 canopy, and sold the building as Woodmont Charter School to Red Apple Development for $9,700,000 six months later. Lease fees for the last two years were $1,009,800 and $1,029,996.
No wonder York citizens are concerned.
What Happened To Charter School Accountability?
Charter schools that were supposedly intended to be more “accountable” to the public are turning out to be anything but.
As an article for The Nation recently observed, “Charters were supposed to be laboratories for innovation. Instead, they are stunningly opaque.”
The article, written by author and university professor Pedro Noguera, explained, “Charter schools are frequently not accountable. Indeed, they are stunningly opaque, more black boxes than transparent laboratories for education.”
Rather than having to show their books, as public schools do, Noguera contended, “Most charters lack financial transparency.” As an example, he offered a study of KIPP charter schools, which found that they receive “‘an estimated $6,500 more per pupil in revenues from public or private sources’ compared to local school districts.” But only a scant portion of that disproportionate funding – just $457 in spending per pupil – could accurately be accounted for “because KIPP does not disclose how it uses money received from private sources.
In addition to the difficulties in following the money,” Noguero continued, “there is evidence that many charters seek to accept only the least difficult (and therefore the least expensive) students. Even though charter schools are required by law to admit students through lotteries, in many cities, the charters under-enroll the most disadvantaged children.”
This tendency of charter schools operations provides a double bonus as their student test scores get pushed to higher levels and the public schools surrounding them have to take on disproportionate percentages of high needs students who push their test score results lower. Noguera cited a study showing that traditional schools serving the largest percentages of high-needs students are frequently the first to be branded with the “failure” label.
If charter schools are going to have any legitimacy at all, what’s required, Noguera concluded is “greater transparency and collaboration with public schools.”
Fortunately, yet another new report points us in the right direction.
This report, “Public Accountability for Charter Schools,” published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, “recommends changes to state charter legislation and charter authorizer standards that would reduce student inequities and achieve complete transparency and accountability to the communities served,” according to the organization’s press release.
According to the report, these recommendations are the product of “a working group of grassroots organizers and leaders” from Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, New York, and other cities, who have “first-hand experience and years of working directly with impacted communities and families, rather than relying only on limited measures such as standardized test scores to assess impact.”
These new guidelines are intended to address numerous examples of charter school failure to disclose essential information about their operations, including financial information, school discipline policies, student enrollment processes, and efforts to collaborate with public schools.
For instance, the report notes that the director of the state Office of Open Records in Pennsylvania, “testified that her office had received 239 appeals in cases where charter schools either rejected or failed to answer requests from the public for information on budgets, payrolls, or student rosters.” In Ohio, a charter chain operated by for-profit White Hat Management Company, “takes in more than $60 million in public funding annually … yet has refused to comply with requests from the governing boards of its own schools for detailed financial reports.” In Philadelphia, the report authors found a charter school that made applications for enrollment available “only one day a year, and only to families who attend an open house at a golf club in the Philadelphia suburbs.” In New York City, where charter schools are co-located in public school buildings, “public school parents have complained that their students have shorter recess, fewer library hours, and earlier lunch schedules to better accommodate students enrolled at the co-located charter school.” The report quotes a lawsuit filed by the NAACP, which documented public school classrooms “with peeling paint and insufficient resources” made to co-locate with charters that have “new computers, brand-new desks, and up-to-date textbooks.”
The Annenberg report’s policy prescriptions fall into seven categories of “standards,” which include:
Traditional school districts and charter schools should collaborate to ensure a coordinated approach that serves all children.
School governance should be representative and transparent.
Charter schools should ensure equal access to interested students and prohibit practices that discourage enrollment or disproportionately push-out enrolled students.
Charter school discipline policy should be fair and transparent.
All students deserve equitable and adequate school facilities. Districts and charter schools should collaborate to ensure facility arrangements do not disadvantage students in either sector.
Online charter schools should be better regulated for quality, transparency and the protection of student data.
Monitoring and oversight of charter schools are critical to protect the public interest; they should be strong and fully state funded.
Unsurprisingly, the report got an immediate response from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, arguing against any regulation on charters. That organization’s response cites “remarkable results” as an excuse for why charters should continue to be allowed to skirt public accountability despite the fact they get public money. However, whenever there is close scrutiny of the remarkable results the charter industry loves to crow about, the facts are those results really aren’t there.
Charter Accountability Now
Of course, now that the truth about charter schools is starting to leak out of the corners of the “black box” the industry uses to protect itself, the charter school PR machine is doing everything it can to cover up reality.
Beginning with the new school year, the charter school industry has been on a publicity terror with a national campaign claiming to tell “The Truth About Charters” and high dollar promotional appeals in Philadelphia and New York City.
But the word is out, and resistance to charter takeovers is stiffening in more places than York. In school systems such as Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, where charter schools are major providers, parents and local officials have increasingly opposed charter takeovers of their neighborhood schools. A recent poll in Michigan, where the majority of charter operations are for-profit, found that 73 percent of voters want a moratorium on opening any new charter schools until the state department of education and the state legislature conduct a full review of the charter school system.
There’s little doubt now that the grand bargain Bill Clinton and other leaders thought they were making with charter schools proponents was a raw deal. The deal is off.
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Dallas Fed president will meet with Fed Up Coalition members to hear their concerns
Dallas Fed president will meet with Fed Up Coalition members to hear their concerns
After nearly two months on the job, the new head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is reaching out to the community — to bunch of community, labor and consumer organizations that have...
After nearly two months on the job, the new head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is reaching out to the community — to bunch of community, labor and consumer organizations that have repeatedly asked to be heard.
Dallas Fed president Rob Kaplan tomorrow will met with a variety of representatives of the national Fed Up Coalition for about 90 minutes, according to the regional bank.
The group was unhappy with the Dallas Fed’s “cryptic” search process to replace replaced former chief Richard Fisher, who retired in March, and with its lack of transparency. I wrote about it. Fed Up members in Texas and nationwide also have called for Federal Reserve to focus on full employment and higher wages for blacks and others in poor neighborhoods who have been left out of the economic recovery.
In August, the Dallas Fed named Kaplan, a former Harvard business professor and investment banker, as president and CEO starting Sept. 8. As one of 12 Fed regional bank presidents around the country, Kaplan helps set the nation’s economic and monetary policy, such as interest rates, that affects people everywhere.
The day after Kaplan’s announcement, the Texas Organizing Project’s Dallas County director Brianna Brown suggested that one of the first things he should do when he got to Dallas was to meet with her group and working families in the area. I wrote about that.
Earlier this year, the Texas Organizing Project and Fed Up asked to meet with Dallas Fed board members to seek more openness and participation in the search process. The Dallas Fed also has faced criticism from other corners for a lack of transparency and the lengthiness (nine months) of its search.
The coalition’s request was denied back then, and instead a meeting was arranged with the bank’s general counsel and senior vice president.
Now, there’s another chance.
“We want to represent the coalition in the same way that the coalition has met with other Fed presidents around the country to encourage them to keep interest rates low to help people in the communities,” Brown said today. “We’re trying to figure out a way that the coalition can be part of the process around Fed policy. How we can collaborate and work together.”
Brown said it’s not a “pie-in-the-sky” idea. She noted that a Fed Up meeting with Chicago Fed president Charles Evans led to him touring a low-income neighborhood in September.
Nearly a dozen people representing Fed Up will attend tomorrow’s meeting at the Dallas Fed. They include: Brown; representatives of the Dallas AFL-CIO, Texas AFL-CIO, Center for Popular Democracy and Economic Policy Institute; Dallas Faith leader Wes Helm; and a Walmart worker. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins also will attend as a guest of Fed Up, said Daniel Barrera, a Dallas organizer for the Texas Organizing Project.
Jenkins and John Patrick, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, did not end up attending the meeting. I wrote a follow-up story on Nov. 5 about the results of the meeting.
The Dallas Fed will have four people present: Kaplan, senior vice president Alfreda Norman, community development officer Roy Lopez and spokesman James Hoard .
“We want to obviously listen to what they have to say, provide any information and answer any questions they have,” Hoard said today about the meeting.
Source: The Dallas Morning News
How progressives can fight against Trump's agenda
How progressives can fight against Trump's agenda
As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we're going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair...
As the new year begins, any honest progressive knows the political outlook is bleak. But if we're going to limit the damage that President-elect Donald Trump inflicts on the country, then despair is not an option. The real question, as Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche recently said, "is how you fight intelligently and strategically when every house is burning down."
Indeed, with Trump and Republicans in Congress aggressively pushing a right-wing agenda, progressives will need to invest their resources and attention where they can do the most good — both now and over the next four years. With that in mind, here are three steps to take to resist and rebuild as the Trump administration gets underway.
First, while strong national leadership is certainly important, progressives must recognize that the most significant resistance to Trump won't take place in Washington. It's going to happen in the streets led by grass-roots activists, and in communities, city halls and statehouses nationwide.
There is real potential for cities and states to act as a bulwark against Trump's agenda. On immigration, for example, a coalition of mayors from across the country — including New York and Los Angeles but also cities throughout the Rust Belt and the South — are already coordinating to fight Trump's deportation plans. Local Progress, a national network of city and county officials, is working to protect civil rights and advance economic and social justice. And while the Trump administration may ravage the environment, cities and states can also continue the fight against global warming; in particular, California has the potential to become a global leader on the issue, and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has defiantly pledged to move forward with plans to slash carbon emissions in the state regardless of Trump's policies.
Cities and states also give progressives an opportunity to play offense by advancing policies that truly improve people's lives, while providing a concrete and actionable blueprint for the rest of the country. Take the Fight for $15. Last year, 25 states, cities and counties approved minimum-wage increases that will result in raises for millions of workers nationwide. And despite Trump's hostility to workers, there are campaigns to increase the minimum wage planned in at least 13 states and other localities over the next two years, representing a real chance to build on that progress.
Second, as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman writes, "We need a broad commitment from activists and donors to take back state governments." Even if Democrats do well in the midterm elections, they are unlikely to regain control of Congress until after the next round of redistricting, in 2020. Yet there will be 87 state legislative chambers and 36 gubernatorial seats up for grabs in 2018. Progressives would be wise to adopt a laserlike focus on winning these races.
A strong performance at the state level in 2018 would do more than improve progressives' ability to combat Trump's policies. It would also help create a stronger pipeline of leaders who could eventually run for higher office, following in the steps of incoming House members Jamie B. Raskin, D-Md., and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. Crucially, it would also give progressive Democrats more influence over congressional redistricting in 2020, boosting the party's prospects at the national level. For that reason, it's noteworthy that President Obama is planning to get involved in state legislative elections and redistricting after he leaves office, though grass-roots efforts will remain paramount.
And third, it will be critical for progressive leaders in Washington to amplify local progress to drive a national message. In the absence of a single party leader — especially one whose success depends on compromising with congressional Republicans — there is more room for strong, populist progressive voices to emerge in opposition to Trump.
Already, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Vt., Elizabeth Warren, Mass., Sherrod Brown, Ohio, and Jeff Merkley, Ore., are stepping up, and they will be joined in the House by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, whose members will play a key role in recruiting and running progressive candidates, connecting with grass-roots movements and driving local issues into the national sphere. Working alongside activist groups, progressive Democrats can present a clear alternative vision for the nation.
To that end, the race for Democratic National Committee chair presents a significant opportunity to shift the party's direction. Regardless of who prevails, progressives would be wise to insist on a return to the 50-state strategy that former chairman Howard Dean championed and that all of the current candidates say they support. Ultimately, the party's fortunes will depend on recruiting a new generation of progressive leaders, especially women and people of color, who can harness the power of social movements and drive it into electoral politics — everywhere in the country, at every level of government.
By: Katrina Vanden Heuvel
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Dreamers demand protections as Senate Democrats cave on budget deal
Dreamers demand protections as Senate Democrats cave on budget deal
Immigrants and advocates were arrested in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday while urging lawmakers to support a “clean” Dream Act.
...
Immigrants and advocates were arrested in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday while urging lawmakers to support a “clean” Dream Act.
Read the full article here.
Charter School Cheats: New Report On Charter Industry Exposes $100 million In Taxpayer Funds Meant For Children Instead Lost To Fraud, Waste & Abuse
ProgressOhio - May 16, 2014 - A new report released today reveals that fraudulent charter operators in 15 states are responsible for losing, misusing or wasting over $100 million in taxpayer money...
ProgressOhio - May 16, 2014 - A new report released today reveals that fraudulent charter operators in 15 states are responsible for losing, misusing or wasting over $100 million in taxpayer money.
“Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud And Abuse,” authored by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education, echoes a warning from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General. The report draws upon news reports, criminal complaints and more to detail how, in just 15 of the 42 states that have charter schools, charter operators have used school funds illegally to buy personal luxuries for themselves, support their other businesses, and more.
The report also includes recommendations for policymakers on how they can address the problem of rampant fraud, waste and abuse in the charter school industry. Both organizations recommend pausing charter expansion until these problems are addressed.
“We expected to find a fair amount of fraud when we began this project, but we did not expect to find over $100 million in taxpayer dollars lost. That’s just in 15 states. And that figure fails to capture the real harm to children. Clearly, we should hit the pause button on charter expansion until there is a better oversight system in place to protect our children and our communities,” said Kyle Serrette, the Director of Education Justice at the Center for Popular Democracy.”
“Our school system exists to serve students and enrich communities,” added Sabrina Stevens, Executive Director of Integrity in Education. “School funding is too scarce as it is; we can hardly afford to waste the resources we do have on people who would prioritize exotic vacations over school supplies or food for children. We also can’t continue to rely on the media or isolated whistleblowers to identify these problems. We need to have rules in place that can systematically weed out incompetent or unscrupulous charter operators before they pose a risk to students and taxpayers.”
You can read the report by going to www.integrityineducation.org or www.populardemocracy.org.
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Meet One of the Sexual Assault Survivors Who Confronted Jeff Flake & Triggered FBI Kavanaugh Probe
Meet One of the Sexual Assault Survivors Who Confronted Jeff Flake & Triggered FBI Kavanaugh Probe
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona was on his way to cast his vote, shortly after announcing his intentions to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when he was confronted...
Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona was on his way to cast his vote, shortly after announcing his intentions to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when he was confronted in an elevator by two women who are sexual assault survivors. The women held open the elevator door, telling Flake, through their tears, that he was dismissing their pain. Soon after, Flake surprised his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee by advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination but asking for an FBIinvestigation before the full Senate vote. President Trump has now ordered an FBIinvestigation into Kavanaugh. We speak with Ana María Archila, one of the women credited with helping to delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Watch the video here.
Death Cab for Cutie, Jim James, more protest Donald Trump with new songs
Death Cab for Cutie, Jim James, more protest Donald Trump with new songs
Death Cab for Cutie
After writer Dave Eggers attended a Donald Trump rally this past June, he realized now would be a good time for the “resurrection of the...
Death Cab for Cutie
After writer Dave Eggers attended a Donald Trump rally this past June, he realized now would be a good time for the “resurrection of the political protest song.” So he called up some artists, including Jim James and Aimee Mann, who wrote tracks for a project that would later become a playlist titled 30 Days, 30 Songs. That playlist, touted as being “written and recorded by musicians for a Trump-free America” launched Monday with Death Cab for Cutie’s “Million Dollar Loan.”
“From Woody Guthrie to Public Enemy, we know that songs can change minds, and particularly now, we need to motivate voters to stand against bigotry, sexism, hatred and ignorance,” Eggers said in a statement.
Eggers launched the playlist — available on Spotify and Apple Music — Oct. 10, 30 days before election day. Thao Nguyen, clipping., and Bhi Bhiman, among others, also contributed tracks, along with R.E.M., who offered up a never-before-released live song for the compilation.
A new track will debut at noon ET each day up until Nov. 8, and all proceeds will go toward the Center for Popular Democracy. Hear Death Cab’s entry below.
BY ARIANA BACLE
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22 hours ago
22 hours ago