Fed Activists To Highlight Racial Justice At Jackson Hole Conference
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of groups led by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy, will converge on Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later this week to urge the Federal Reserve to be more...
The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of groups led by the nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy, will converge on Jackson Hole, Wyoming, later this week to urge the Federal Reserve to be more responsive to the needs of American workers. In doing so, it will focus on both “economic and racial inequality,” campaign director Ady Barkan told reporters on a Monday press call previewing the campaign’s plans.
The gathering is aimed at influencing Fed officials attending the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium.
A major theme of Fed Up's parallel conference on Thursday and Friday will be “Whose Recovery,” based on the premise that the economic recovery has yet to reach many workers, particularly those of color. They note that the official African-American unemployment rate -- 9.1 percent -- is much higher than the 5.3 percent rate for the overall population.
“Although there has been a strong recovery for Wall Street, that recovery has not reached Main Street,” Barkan said. At Jackson Hole, Barkan said, “We will be asking not only, ‘Whose recovery is this?’ but also, ‘Whose Federal Reserve is this?’”
The Fed Up campaign’s immediate goal is to stop an interest rate hike that would slow economic growth, which it says would disproportionately hurt people of color. The Federal Reserve has indicated it will raise interest rates in September, though some economic analysts are speculating that Monday’s stock market slide and turmoil in emerging-market economies will give the central bank pause. Over the longer term, Fed Up hopes to reform the selection process for regional Federal Reserve bank presidents, which it believes currently reflects the interests of financial elites more than the broader public.
(For more on the Fed Up campaign's efforts and the broader debate over monetary policy, head over here.)
Fed Up will bring an estimated 50 low-income workers and representatives of communities of color from across the country to the Jackson Hole gathering -- an increase from the 10 activists it brought last year.
“We see racial justice and racial economic equality as part of the same agenda," Barkan added, referencing the persistent racial disparity in employment.
The campaign has reserved conference rooms where activists will hold “teach-ins” making the case for monetary policy that prioritizes full employment and wage growth, and plan to share their views in informal conversations with Fed officials and members of the media.
The activists will also deliver to Fed officials an as-yet-undetermined number of petition signatures opposing an interest rate hike absent greater wage growth. Last year, Fed Up amassed 10,000 signatures for a similar petition, but this year it hopes to submit a much larger number thanks to the campaign’s collaboration with progressive online heavyweights CREDO Action, Daily Kos and Working Families Party, and a promotional video from popular liberal economist Robert Reich that has already been viewed over 150,000 times.
Asked whether Fed Up planned any public and potentially disruptive protests at the Jackson Hole gathering, Barkan refused to disclose any specific plans, but did not rule them out either.
While Fed Up since its inception has focused on the disproportionate impact of Federal Reserve interest rates on people of color, its events at Jackson Hole this year explicitly appeal to the themes of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has gained steam since last year’s conference. The campaign will host back-to-back teach-ins entitled “Do Black Lives Matter To The Federal Reserve?” on Thursday and Friday that Barkan said will explain how a “weak economy causes racial discrimination and disparities.” The sessions will be organized by activists from the St. Louis and Wichita, Kansas, metropolitan areas, many of whom have also been active in protests against police mistreatment of, and use of force against, black people.
Barkan said that because Black Lives Matter is not a centralized movement, however, it has no formal affiliation with Fed Up.
Dawn O’Neal and Keesha Moore, two African-American rank-and-file Fed Up activists who are attending the Jackson Hole gathering, shared their reasons for lobbying the Fed.
O’Neal described the challenges of earning just $8.50 an hour as a teaching assistant for 3-year-old children in Dekalb County, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. Her husband is unemployed and stands in line at 5 a.m. every day for odd construction jobs at a local gathering point for day laborers. If her husband is lucky, he is one of 30 or 40 men among a group of 300 predominantly black men to be chosen for work that pays roughly the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. They lack health insurance and must choose which bills to pay at the end of every month.
“When the Fed says the economy is recovering, I do not see recovery in my community. I see the struggle of my neighbors, lines of people looking for work, people trying to make ends meet on McDonald’s salaries,” O’Neill said Monday on the press call. “I do not think those at the Fed know how life is here in South Dekalb county when they say the economy is recovering.”
Moore, a 36-year-old single mother of four in Philadelphia, described her dogged and disheartening search for work after being laid off as a data entry specialist seven months ago. She lamented a Catch-22 of job hunting: Getting a good job often requires a car, and she will only be able to afford a car when she has a job.
Moore suspects that being African American has impeded her job search. “They always ask me when I apply what my race is,” Moore said. “I am not quite sure what that has to do with getting a job.”
Moore, like O’Neal, wants to tell the Fed about her community’s urgent need for more jobs and “fair” wages.
Fed Up and its allies say even a modest interest rate hike will slow down a job market that is already inadequate for the size of the population and has yet to produce significant wage growth. That would disproportionately hurt people of color, who are already more likely to be out of work, and often experience discrimination in hiring that they are more likely to overcome in a high-demand economy supported by low interest rates.
Proponents of a Federal Reserve interest rate increase, which include many Fed officials, center-right economists and politicians, argue that rates must rise to prevent excessive price and asset inflation. And some economists are also expressing concerns that prolonged low interest rates will limit the Fed’s ability to stimulate the economy by cutting rates if and when a significant slowdown occurs, The Wall Street Journal reported on August 17.
The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, which is hosting the Jackson Hole symposium that Fed Up is targeting, is aware of the planned counter-conference, Barkan said, but has not expressed opinions about it. Fed Up’s actions last year led to a meeting between activists and Kansas City Fed president Esther George.
Barkan said that Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart had expressed interest in attending Fed Up’s sessions.
"President Lockhart’s first obligation is to the Kansas City Fed’s conference that he is in Jackson Hole to attend," Jean Tate, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta Fed, told HuffPost. "He has some other commitments on his schedule as well. If time permits, he may be able to briefly listen to some of the conversation at the Fed-Up event, but it is not something that we can confirm."
This post has been updated with a response from the Atlanta Fed about whether President Dennis Lockhart plans to attend Fed Up events.
Source: Huffington Post
Yellen, Departing Fed, Will Join Brookings
Yellen, Departing Fed, Will Join Brookings
Fed Up, a coalition of unions and community groups, said it would deliver a giant “Thank You” card to the Fed on Friday afternoon to celebrate Ms. Yellen’s success in reducing unemployment.
...Fed Up, a coalition of unions and community groups, said it would deliver a giant “Thank You” card to the Fed on Friday afternoon to celebrate Ms. Yellen’s success in reducing unemployment.
Read the full article here.
Urban leaders converge in Minneapolis to discuss 'blue city' agendas
Urban leaders converge in Minneapolis to discuss 'blue city' agendas
Leaders in progressive urban politics from around the country are converging in Minneapolis Friday to strategize on affordable housing, immigrant rights, criminal justice reform and other issues....
Leaders in progressive urban politics from around the country are converging in Minneapolis Friday to strategize on affordable housing, immigrant rights, criminal justice reform and other issues. The two-day conference, called the Local Progress Convening, promotes the development of “blue city” — or Democratic — political agendas, and will include panels of city-level politicians and organizers from Philadelphia, Denver and New York.
Read the full article here.
Pennsylvania Groups Press For Quicker Action on Immigration Reform
CBS – September 5, 2013, by Cherri Gregg -
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — As Congress gets ready to head back to Washington, a coalition of Pennsylvania advocates for immigration reform is holding a...
CBS – September 5, 2013, by Cherri Gregg -
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — As Congress gets ready to head back to Washington, a coalition of Pennsylvania advocates for immigration reform is holding a series of events to send a clear message to area elected officials.
The events include town hall meetings, business roundtables, prayer vigils, and rallies in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Montgomery and other counties.
“This last week of events is just to send them back to Washington with a big push,” says Sundrop Carter, the lead organizer for Pennsylvania United for Immigration Reform. “Now is Congress’ opportunity to do the right thing — to pass comprehensive immigration reforms that provide a pathway to citizenship, workers’ rights, and reunification of families.”
Bucks County resident Celia Sharp came to the United States 40 years ago from Colombia because of civil unrest in her home country. Now a US citizen, she says reforms are necessary — especially in Pennsylvania, where immigrant populations are growing.
“This is a critical human rights matter, a national security issue,” she says.
Some of the upcoming regional events include the following:
Business Roundtable by Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, Center for Popular Democracy, Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians:”Immigration Reform: Growing Pennsylvania’s Economy.” Thursday, Sept. 5, 12 noon, 200 S. Broad St., G. Fred DiBona Jr. Room, Philadelphia, PA Vigil for Immigration Reform and End Deportations Now by Pennsylvania United for Immigration Reform, JUNTOS. Monday, Sept. 9, 6:30pm, at 354 W Elm St, Norristown, PA March and Rally for Comprehensive Immigration Reform by Organizing for Action, Keystone Progress. Thursday, Sept. 12, 1pm, at Delaware Canal State Park, New Hope, PA Community Forum on Comprehensive Immigration Reform by Center for Popular Democracy, Grupo de Apoyo e Integración Hispanoamericano, Muhlenburg College. Thursday, Sept. 12, 7pm, at Muhlenberg College, 2400 W. Chew St, Seegers Union, Allentown PA.Source
Regional Feds' head-hunting under scrutiny over insider bias, delays
Efforts to fill top positions at some U.S. Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight on a decades-old process that critics say is opaque, favors insiders, and is ripe for reform....
Efforts to fill top positions at some U.S. Federal Reserve regional branches are casting a spotlight on a decades-old process that critics say is opaque, favors insiders, and is ripe for reform.
Patrick Harker took the reins as president of the Philadelphia Fed this week, in an appointment that attracted scrutiny because he served on the committee of directors that interviewed other prospective candidates for the job he ultimately took.
The Dallas Fed has been without a permanent president for more than three months as that search process stretches well into its eighth month. And the Fed's Minneapolis branch abruptly announced the departure of its leader, Narayana Kocherlakota, more than a year before he was due to go, with no replacement named to date.
The delays and reliance on Fed employees in picking regional Fed presidents can only embolden Republican Senator Richard Shelby to push harder for a makeover of the central bank's structure, which has changed little in its 101 years.
A bill passed in May by the Senate Banking Committee that Shelby chairs would strip the New York Fed's board of its power to appoint its presidents. And it could go further, given the bill would form a committee to consider a wholesale overhaul of the Fed's structure of 12 districts, which has not changed through the decades of shifting U.S. populations and an evolving economy.
The bill is part of a broader conservative effort to expose the central bank to more oversight, and some analysts saw the Philadelphia Fed's choice as reinforcing the view that the Fed needs to open up more to outsiders.
Nine of 11 current regional presidents came from within the Fed, a proportion that has edged up over time. Twenty years ago, seven of 12 were insiders.
"The process seems to create a diverse set of candidates in which the insider is almost always accepted," said Aaron Klein, director of a financial regulatory reform effort at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Since it was created in 1913, the central bank's decentralized structure was meant to check the power of Washington, where seven Fed governors with permanent votes on policy are appointed by the White House and approved by the Senate.
The 12 Fed presidents who are picked by their regional boards usually vote on policy every two or three years, and they tend to hold more diverse views.
Former Richmond Fed President Alfred Broaddus told Reuters the regional Fed chiefs have more freedom "to do and say things that may not be politically popular" because they are not politically appointed. "On the other hand, there is the question of legitimacy since they are appointed by local boards who are not elected."
"TONE DEAF"
Two-thirds of regional Fed directors are selected by local bankers, while the rest are appointed by the Fed's Board of Governors in Washington.
Critics question how well those regional boards - mostly made of the heads of corporations and industry groups meant to represent the public - fulfill their mission.
Last year, a non-profit group representing labor unions and community leaders organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, urged the Fed's Philadelphia and Dallas branches to make the selection of their presidents more transparent and to include a member of the public in the effort.
Philadelphia's Fed in particular proved "tone deaf" in its head-hunting effort, said Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Harker was a Philadelphia Fed director when the board started looking to replace president Charles Plosser, who left on March 1, and he was among the six directors who interviewed more than a dozen short-listed candidates for the job, according to the Philadelphia Fed.
But on Feb. 18, Harker floated his own name, recused himself from the process and a week later his colleagues on the board unanimously appointed him as the new president.
While the selection follows Fed guidelines and was approved by its Board of Governors, it raised questions of transparency and fairness.
"The Philadelphia Fed's search process might have made perfect sense in a corporate environment, but is obviously problematic for an official institution," said Crandall.
The board's chair and vice chair, Swathmore Group founder James Nevels and Michael Angelakis of Comcast Corp, respectively, declined to comment, as did Harker.
Peter Conti-Brown, an academic fellow at Stanford Law School's Rock Center for Corporate Governance, and an expert witness at a Senate Banking Committee hearing this year, proposed to let the Fed Board appoint and fire regional Fed presidents or at least have a say in the selection process.
In the past, reform proposals for the 12 regional Fed banks have focused on decreasing or increasing their number and their governance.
Changes to the way the regional Fed bosses are chosen could strengthen the influence of lawmakers at the expense of regional interests.
For now, delays in appointments of new chiefs force regional banks to send relatively unknown deputies to debate monetary policy at meetings in Washington, as Dallas and Philadelphia did last month when the Fed considered raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.
The Minneapolis Fed still has time to find a new president before Kocherlakota steps down at year end.
"For now the Fed criticism is just noise, mostly from Republicans," said Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group. "But once the Fed begins to raise interest rates ... then the left will weigh in as well."
(Additional reporting Ann Saphir in San Francisco; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
Source: Reuters
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.
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.
Source
Chicago teachers go on first-ever charter school strike, demanding more pay, educational resources
Chicago teachers go on first-ever charter school strike, demanding more pay, educational resources
“But even with such support, many charter schools are struggling due to little public oversight. In Illinois, the Education Department found in 2010 that the state “has no system in place for [...
“But even with such support, many charter schools are struggling due to little public oversight. In Illinois, the Education Department found in 2010 that the state “has no system in place for [monitoring charter schools].” According to research by the Center for Popular Democracy and Action Now, by early 2015, Illinois had seen $13.1 million in fraud by charter school officials, with total fraud estimated at more than $27 million in 2014 alone.
Read the full article here.
New initiative Opioid Network lobbies legislators
New initiative Opioid Network lobbies legislators
Standing in the marble-floored hallway of a U.S. Senate building, Don LoGiudice of Boardman recalled the morning he found his son, Donny, dead from a drug overdose.
...
Standing in the marble-floored hallway of a U.S. Senate building, Don LoGiudice of Boardman recalled the morning he found his son, Donny, dead from a drug overdose.
Read the full article here.
CPD's Connie Razza Joins MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry to Discuss the Strength of the Dollar
Melissa Harris-Perry - March 22, 2015 - How does the strength or weakness of the dollar affect average Americans? Joshua Steiner and CPD's Director of Strategic Research Connie Razza join to...
Melissa Harris-Perry - March 22, 2015 - How does the strength or weakness of the dollar affect average Americans? Joshua Steiner and CPD's Director of Strategic Research Connie Razza join to discuss.
Source
2 days ago
2 days ago