Policy for a new majority
The Huffington Post - July 15, 2013, by Brittny Saunders - Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate approved historic federal immigration reform legislation in a 68-32 vote. Observers have linked the bill's...
The Huffington Post - July 15, 2013, by Brittny Saunders - Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate approved historic federal immigration reform legislation in a 68-32 vote. Observers have linked the bill's relatively rapid movement -- perhaps unimaginable only a few years ago -- to the growing numbers of Latino and Asian voters and their overwhelming support for President Obama in the 2012 presidential election. The progress of federal immigration reform is just one signal that as the country undergoes sweeping demographic changes that will make the U.S. a majority people of color nation within 30 years, traditional understandings of what the machinery of public policy can produce and for whom will also shift.
Changes in the racial and ethnic makeup of the nation's population demand policies that account for the needs of communities of color as well as the increasingly central role such communities will play in driving economic growth in coming years. As experts have noted, the continuing viability of entitlements like Medicare and Social Security will soon depend on the Latino, Asian and Black workers who will constitute a growing portion of American workers.
These shifts are also altering constituencies and causing some elected leaders to revisit old positions. While much attention has been focused on the implications of these demographic changes for national elections and policymaking, this is not only a national trend. In state houses and city halls across the country, a historic moment has been taking shape. People of color, immigrants and workers are fighting for and winning state and local legislation that demonstrates the growing influence of the emerging new majority. In Connecticut, for example, communities fought for and won a statewide policy that makes it clear that local governments need only comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer requests under limited circumstances, helping to restore trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement. The legislation, called the TRUST Act, was passed only weeks after Connecticut legislators voted to grant driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants, joining a growing list of states -- including Washington, New Mexico, Utah, Maryland, Illinois and Oregon -- that have already enacted similar measures.
The demographic shifts that are underway also create increased opportunities for immigrant communities to unite with others that have long been targeted by discriminatory state and local policies and practices. Growing efforts to challenge tactics like racial and ethnic profiling and disparate enforcement are evidence of this. These tactics have grave consequences for immigrant Americans, for whom an unjustified street or vehicle stop can lead to detention, deportation and permanent separation from loved ones. And even for those for whom immigration status is not an issue, such targeting can lead to costly, long-term engagement with the criminal justice system with implications for housing and employment opportunities. But across the country, in urban, suburban and rural settings, immigrant and African-American communities are working together to win policies designed to end police targeting of their communities.
In New York, such efforts led recently to a victory that promises to set a new standard for what state and local governments can do to tackle the problem of discriminatory policing. At the end of June the New York City Council passed two historic bills that will enhance NYPD accountability. The measures -- which passed with support from a supermajority of the Council -- will establish external oversight of the Department, expand protection against profiling to a broader cross-section of New Yorkers, and give City residents new tools for challenging discriminatory practices. The bills' passage is due to tireless advocacy by Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition including groups representing not only immigrants and communities of color in the City, but also LGBTQ New Yorkers, homeless New Yorkers and others. While the Council must still override a promised mayoral veto, its leadership in this area is significant. With this legislation, New York City has an opportunity to move to the forefront of state and local public safety policy, demonstrating that there are alternatives to the discriminatory, outdated and ineffective policing strategies that have been in place in far too many communities for far too long.
Of course, success is not inevitable. And these and other attempts to change policy at the state and local levels have faced organized and passionate opposition. But each of these efforts suggests a tantalizing possibility: that in the decades to come we may actually succeed in breaking with the entrenched patterns of old and building power among communities that for much of our nation's history have been marginalized.
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New Toolkit Puts Municipal ID Within Reach of Legislators Across Country
New Toolkit Puts Municipal ID Within Reach of Legislators Across Country
Today, Center for Popular Democracy is releasing a new guide to setting up municipal ID Building...
Today, Center for Popular Democracy is releasing a new guide to setting up municipal ID Building Identity: A Toolkit for Designing and Implementing a Successful Municipal ID Program, to take the fight for immigrant dignity to cities across the country.
Municipal IDs allow all residents, regardless of immigration status, gender identity, or other characteristics, to open a bank account or cash a check, see a doctor at a hospital, register their child for school, apply for public benefits, file a complaint with the police department, borrow a book from a library, vote in an election, or even collect a package from the post office. Municipal ID removes all of these barriers with a single stroke.
To mark the release of the toolkit, immigrant New Yorkers who have benefited from the municipal ID program will gather on the front steps of City Hall, NYC, at 11am to call for other cities across the country to adopt similar programs.
In addition to New York City, grassroots organization have successfully passed municipal ID programs in major cities like Newark and Hartford, improving the lives of immigrant communities and underserved populations. Center for Popular Democracy’s new toolkit will help like-minded leaders in other parts of the country create similar programs.
Ana Maria Archila, co-executive director of Center for Popular Democracy, stated: “In each city we pass municipal ID, the immediate outpouring of immigrant families eager to cement their status as members of communities is heartening. Immigrants’ history and contributions make them central parts of our communities across the country. This toolkit symbolizes the effort, partnerships, and strong bonds that will take the fight for immigrant justice to the next level in cities across the country.”
Ruth Pacheco, Make the Road New York member and Queens resident, who has two school-age children, said: “My municipal ID has opened many important doors for me, whether at my children’s school, the bank, or the library. Before, when I had to meet with my children’s teachers, they wouldn’t let me in without ID. Now the IDNYC solves that problem. Before, to open a bank account or present myself at the bank, I had to bring my passport, which was risky. Now the IDNYC solves that problem.”
“The municipal identification program—now IDNYC—is a hallmark of our City and a testament to how robustly we want to engage with New Yorkers of all experiences. This program, as we anticipated, has been particularly helpful to those who have a historic disconnect with governments of all levels. For those people, this municipal identification ogram has changed the game. The level at which people are engaging with government, and with one another in their communities is something that should be modeled and I am heartened that now, with this announcement from the Center for Popular Democracy, other cities will be able to do just that,” said Council Member Carlos Menchaca.
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www.populardemocracy.org
The Center for Popular Democracy promotes equity, opportunity, and a dynamic democracy in partnership with innovative base-building organizations, organizing networks and alliances, and progressive unions across the country. CPD builds the strength and capacity of democratic organizations to envision and advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda.
Activist Ady Barkan says despite loss in Arizona, every seat is up for grabs
Activist Ady Barkan says despite loss in Arizona, every seat is up for grabs
Activist Ady Barkan, who is fighting ALS, is starting a new fight - to get people to vote. He’s asking people to “Be A Hero” and vote for candidates who protect healthcare. Ady tells Ali Velshi...
Activist Ady Barkan, who is fighting ALS, is starting a new fight - to get people to vote. He’s asking people to “Be A Hero” and vote for candidates who protect healthcare. Ady tells Ali Velshi that with all the challenges he faces that if he can get out and vote, everyone can.
Watch the video here.
A Terminally Ill Progressive Activist Confronted Jeff Flake About The Tax Bill On A Flight
A Terminally Ill Progressive Activist Confronted Jeff Flake About The Tax Bill On A Flight
A leading progressive activist with Lou Gehrig’s disease appealed to Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to reconsider his support for the Republican tax bill during a flight to Phoenix on Thursday.
...A leading progressive activist with Lou Gehrig’s disease appealed to Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) to reconsider his support for the Republican tax bill during a flight to Phoenix on Thursday.
“I need you to make your vote match your principles, senator. And for the rest of your life, you will be proud if you vote this bill down,” said Ady Barkan, founding director of the Fed Up campaign, a group backed by the Center for Popular Democracy that pushes the Federal Reserve to set monetary policy that favors workers.
Read the full article here.
Urban Outfitters heeds call to end on-call shifts
WELL, THAT was fast!
Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's unbelievably abusive to its lowest-wage workers. Within...
WELL, THAT was fast!
Yesterday I wrote about an "on-call" scheduling practice at Urban Outfitters that's unbelievably abusive to its lowest-wage workers. Within hours of the column hitting print, Urban announced it was killing the practice for good.
Coincidence? You decide.
Here's yesterday's statement from the Philly-based billion-dollar retailer, which also owns the brands Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and Bhldn.
"We are always looking for ways to improve, and as such we have decided to end on-call scheduling for all [Urban] brand associates throughout North America. We look forward to continuing to find ways to better fulfill our mission of providing fashion and lifestyle essentials to our dedicated customers."
This is amazing news for employees at Urban's 518 North American stores.
For years, they'd been receiving their work schedules only a few days in advance, with some shifts designated as "on call." But they wouldn't be told, until three hours before the shift was to begin, whether they'd actually be needed to work. If they weren't, they wouldn't be paid, even though they'd been required to hold that time for the company.
The unpredictability had wreaked havoc on workers, who are mostly young and female.
They were unable to schedule classes if they were in school. Or to schedule hours at a second job if they needed a full-time income. Or to reliably arrange day care or pay their bills, since their cost to do both was fixed even though their working hours weren't.
What a crappy way to treat members of the demographic that Urban targets so heavily.
"It's pretty messed up," one worker, a college student, told me. She was paying her way through school, but Urban's scheduling meant she couldn't schedule other work to help pay tuition. "It's hard to plan."
Readers reacted with disgust to the column.
"Retail needs to be called on the carpet!" wrote emailer rgrassia. "We need more people with the ability to do something to pressure these companies to change the ways they conduct themselves."
Reader Madeleine Pierucci excoriated Urban for "co-opting the '60s struggles and playing it to the detriment of its 2015 workers. Not cool." She also planned to picket Urban's Center City store next week.
And a furious churchgoer named Samantha C. vowed to spread the word throughout the National Baptist Convention to have its 100,000 church members boycott Urban's stores in protest.
"It's time for slavery to stop," she declared.
Urban's change of heart is a testament to the power of the press, says Carrie Gleason. She's director of the fair-workweek initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy and has been working for a very long time to get employers to end on-call staffing.
"The media has helped shift the public opinion in terms of what is acceptable around employers' expectations of their employees' time," she told me. "I think Urban's announcement is a direct response to the fact that the public is now holding the whole retail industry to higher standards."
I'd like to take credit for Urban's reversal, but the truth is, another media outlet has been hammering at on-call scheduling by retailers - and not just Urban - for a while now.
The online news site BuzzFeed has chronicled the issue so doggedly that the New York state attorney general in April called companies on the carpet for the practice, following his investigation into the legality of on-call staffing at 13 retailers whose New York stores employ thousands of low-wage workers.
As a result, huge chains like Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Abercrombie and Gap announced plans to discontinue the practice not just in New York but nationally, improving hundreds of thousands of workers' lives.
Urban, though, had said it would discontinue the practice only in New York. Everywhere else, it would be exploitation as usual.
It turned my stomach that Philly-based Urban - a company that so many of us grew up with and feel affinity for - would treat its workers so shabbily. And I said as much in my column, which we - ahem - pushed on the Daily News front page and on Philly.com.
If that helped nudge Urban into doing the decent thing, then yesterday was a good day.
Not just for Urban's workers. But for Urban's shareholders:
As news hit that Urban would end its on-call scheduling, CNBC reported, the company's stock rallied 4.68 percent.
You're welcome, Urban.
And thank you.
Source: Philly.com
Fed Up group claims Fed behind loss of reservation
Fed Up group claims Fed behind loss of reservation
A group critical of Federal Reserve policy is crying foul after their reservations for an upcoming meeting of central bankers at the Jackson Lake Lodge were revoked.
The hotel is claiming a...
A group critical of Federal Reserve policy is crying foul after their reservations for an upcoming meeting of central bankers at the Jackson Lake Lodge were revoked.
The hotel is claiming a booking error is responsible. The group of labor unions and community organizations isn’t buying it.
The annual Economic Policy Symposium hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, held in Grand Teton National Park, is one of the most high-profile meetings of the country’s central bankers. This year, they are set to discuss frameworks for raising and lowering interest rates. Rates are currently low, and the debate in the Fed is how soon they should rise.
Fed Up is a coalition which argues that Federal Reserve interest rate policy is geared toward corporate and banking interests, leaving out the interests of workers and minorities.
“The impact of higher interest rates is to slow the economy down,” said Jordan Haedtler, Fed Up’s campaign manager. Raising rates pushes down inflation, which is good for lenders, but it does that by increasing unemployment and making it harder for workers to get raises, he said.
At the last two conferences in Jackson Hole, Fed Up has staged protests and an alternative conference focused on the impact that Federal Reserve policy has on wages and unemployment. The group plans a similar event at the meeting this year, despite the loss of their reservations, Haedtler said.
The lodge, which has 385 rooms, revoked 18 reservations in July. Those included all 13 rooms the Fed Up coalition had booked.
The Grand Teton Lodge Company is the National Park Service-authorized concessionaire which operates the Jackson Lake Lodge. Vice president and general manager Alex Klein said in a statement: “This summer we encountered an error with our booking system that resulted in our Jackson Lake Lodge property being oversold by 18 rooms for three peak nights in August.”
Klein said the company worked to move those who lost rooms to Flagg Ranch, 20 miles to the north.
Haedtler thinks his group was specifically targeted.
“We think that the computer glitch strains credulity,” he said “It’s pretty well known that the Kansas City Fed in particular doesn’t welcome our presence, but we think it’s important for the voices of working families and communities of color … to be included.”
Haedtler said his group made its reservations in May, and he was told by hotel officials that some guests who had made their reservations later in the year hadn’t lost their rooms. He said because the lodge is owned by the National Park Service, it has an obligation to protect free speech.
“The National Park Service, more than any other institution, is supposed to be a place of public accommodation,” he said. “We have secured a free speech permit, and we will be at the lodge during the Fed summit.”
The group filed an official complaint with the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice on Tuesday.
“What happened here is that, once again, the voices and faces of working class people of color have been marginalized; they have been treated disrespectfully; their opportunity to enjoy our country’s national parks has been subordinated to that of wealthy white guests,” the group wrote.
By Bryan Clark
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How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
How Can We Combat Wage Theft And Protect Immigrant Workers?
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed. Wage theft, which costs America’s low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion...
Every year, millions of workers suffer from wage theft when employers or companies do not pay them what they are owed. Wage theft, which costs America’s low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion each year, comes in different forms. An employer could keep customer tips instead of paying them out to workers, force employees to work off the clock without compensation, or illegally deduct the cost of uniforms or work tools from employees’ paycheck.
Read the full article here.
Advocates Rally to Eliminate ‘Sub-Minimum Wage'
Brooklyn Daily Eagle - October 23, 2014, by Matthew Taub - Hundreds of tipped and low-wage workers and advocates, including fast food, car wash and other low-wage workers, rallied...
Brooklyn Daily Eagle - October 23, 2014, by Matthew Taub - Hundreds of tipped and low-wage workers and advocates, including fast food, car wash and other low-wage workers, rallied outside a Domino’s Pizza location in Harlem before marching to the second public hearing of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Wage Board, where they testified and called on the Wage Board to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for the 229,000 tipped workers in New York state.
“In an increasingly unaffordable city, tipped workers remain among the lowest-paid hourly workers,” said New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, who joined the workers at the rally and wage board hearing. “An hourly wage of $5 an hour is simply not sustainable for an individual or a family. Now is the time to ensure that low-wage workers receive a fair and sustainable income. I join the many voices today calling on Gov. Cuomo to help bring fair wages to these industries.”
Employers in New York are allowed to pay less than the minimum wage — just $5 an hour — to restaurant servers, delivery workers and other service workers. Employers are legally required to “top off” a tipped worker’s pay when it falls short of the regular minimum wage, but lax enforcement enables employers to routinely violate minimum wage, overtime and other wage and hour laws with minimal repercussion.
“We work very hard and deserve a raise, just like other minimum wage workers in this state,” said Juana Tenesaca, a tipped worker and member of Make the Road New York. “I have worked as a waitress for years, earning the tipped minimum wage, and it’s impossible to raise my children never knowing how much money I’ll bring home at the end of the day. My daughter had to get a job while she was still in high school to help support our family and that breaks my heart.”
A July report by the National Employment Law Project finds that eliminating the sub-minimum wage would benefit an estimated 229,000 tipped workers in New York.
“Tipped workers are employed in industries like hospitality that are among the fastest growing in today’s economy,” said Tsedeye Gebreselassie, senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “If we want to stimulate consumer spending and boost our local economies, we need to make sure that the growing number of New Yorkers relying on these jobs actually have money to spend on basic necessities at their neighborhood stores.”
“Having to live entirely off tips means the customer is always right, which means I’ve had to put up with unwanted advances and uncomfortable situations from guests,” said Ashley Ogogor, a tipped worker and member of Restaurant Opportunities Center-United. “The guest shouldn’t have to feel pressured at the end of the night to pay me a decent wage. If seven other states can require restaurant owners to pay their employees a full minimum wage, so can New York.”
As part of last year’s legislative deal to increase New York’s minimum wage to $9 an hour by Dec. 31, 2015, the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers was set to automatically rise in proportion to the full minimum wage whenever the latter is raised with one exception: workers in the hospitality industry. The final deal froze these workers’ wages at $5 an hour and instructed Gov. Cuomo’s Department of Labor to convene a “wage board” to determine whether these workers will get a raise, and if so, by how much.
“We call on Gov. Cuomo and the wage board to do whatever it takes to lift up working families in the Empire State,” said Tony Perlstein, campaigns co-director for the Center for Popular Democracy. “Wealthy restaurant employers shouldn’t receive special treatment that allows them to pay poverty wages to working New Yorkers, including the women who make up more than two-thirds of the tipped wage workforce. Seven states have already eliminated their sub-minimum wages, and more are seriously considering it. Their restaurant sectors are not suffering for it, and in fact are thriving.”
The wage board, consisting of Timothy Grippen, Retired Broome county executive; Heather C. Briccetti, president and CEO of the Business Council; and Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel Trade Council, heard hours of testimony detailing how New York’s tipped subminimum wage fuels unstable paychecks and poverty for thousands of workers, particularly women, across the state.
“People want to work hard at a place where they feel valued,” said Amado Rosa, a tipped worker at a Thai restaurant and a member of Make the Road New York. “Being paid $4 or $5 an hour does not make a worker feel validated and does not generate enough income to support a single person or a family. I have faced many hardships over the years, and my anxiety stemmed from not knowing what my take-home pay would be in a given week.”
The poverty rate among New York’s tipped workers is more than double that of the regular workforce. Seven states across the country have adopted policies requiring employers to pay tipped workers the full minimum wage and have shown that eliminating the sub-minimum wage reduces poverty without slowing job growth. In fact, according to projections by the National Restaurant Association in their 2014 Industry Forecast, all of the states that require employers to directly pay the full minimum wage to tipped workers are expected to have greater restaurant job growth than New York in the next decade — in most cases, much greater. Tipped workers are already being paid $9 or more in California, Washington and Oregon, and will soon be getting raises to over $9 in Minnesota, Hawaii and Alaska.
“More than 3 million New Yorkers work low-wage jobs, and they need our state government officials on their side,” said Michael Kink of the Strong Economy for All Coalition. “New York needs a one-two punch for good jobs: a big increase in the minimum wage, and elimination of the second-class sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. This combination could boost the paychecks of millions of workers and help revive the New York economy from the ground up — the Wage Board should take direct action to provide one fair wage to a quarter-million tipped workers to get us moving now.”
Advocates who testified at today’s hearing are members of Raise Up NY, fighting for #1FairWage, a coalition comprised of tipped workers, the National Employment Law Project, Make the Road New York, the Center for Popular Democracy, Fast Food Forward, New York Labor-Religion Coalition, New York Communities for Change, ROC-NY, ROC-NY affiliate of Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United, Strong for All, United New York, Citizen Action New York, Tompkins County Workers Center, Worker Center of Central New York, Metro Justice, Coalition for Economic Justice, Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse (ACTS) and other community groups and advocates around New York State calling for the elimination of New York’s sub-minimum wage for tipped workers.
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Time for a Moratorium on Charter Schools
Al Jazeera America - April 14, 2015, by Amy Dean - Charter schools are everywhere. Not long ago, these publicly funded but privately run institutions were a relative rarity. Those that existed...
Al Jazeera America - April 14, 2015, by Amy Dean - Charter schools are everywhere. Not long ago, these publicly funded but privately run institutions were a relative rarity. Those that existed served mostly as experimental academies whose successful lessons could be applied elsewhere in their host school districts. But in the last 15 years, swaths of the U.S. public education system have been turned over to charters. In fact, they are being used as a means to crush teachers’ unions and to pursue high-stakes testing.
Charter advocates justify this ascent by promising an antidote to the disappointing outcomes of traditional public schools in segregated and underfunded urban districts. But the research is in: Charter schools have failed to deliver on their promises.
It is time lawmakers freeze their growth and consider how to provide the best education possible for all students.
Underwhelming performance
There are recent precedents for a moratorium on charter schools. Philadelphia, which issued dozens of charter licenses before 2008, did not allow any new ones from 2008 to 2015. The Chicago School District declared a freeze on charters for the 2015–16 school year. Connecticut and Delaware are considering similar actions. Other school boards and states should follow suit.
As a bevy of recent studies prove, charter schools are not substantially outperforming neighborhood public schools. In Arizona, for example, “on average, charter schools in Arizona do no better, and sometimes worse, than the traditional public schools” according to a study by the Brookings Institution. A similar study in Ohio showed that public schools were producing better results than their charter peers in most parts of the state. In Illinois the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity found that Chicago’s charter schools are “less likely to be racially or ethnically diverse” than and “consistently underperform” their public school peers.
That charter schools are not doing better than traditional public schools is particularly disturbing, since they have a host of advantages. Notably, many charters cherry-pick their students. A 2013 study by Reuters found that charter schools employ complicated screening mechanisms to admit only students who are most likely to succeed. This ensures that students from deeply impoverished families or households where English is not spoken at home are less likely to gain admission. These methods include using English-only documents, demanding proof of citizenship (which is illegal) and narrowing application windows to a few hours.
Charters also regulate the composition of their student bodies through expulsions. In 2014 the Chicago School District reported that public schools expelled 182 students out of 353,000. By contrast, charter schools booted 307 students out of 50,000. The expelled students end up back in the public schools, which become the institution of last resort. Charter schools should in theory register superior test scores, since they are not serving some of the highest-need students. Yet that has not been the case on the whole.
Charters have fallen short in terms of transparency and accountability too. A 2010 review from the Philadelphia controller’s office found that the city’s charter schools had little oversight from the understaffed and underfunded school district. Numerous charter operators have been charged with corruption and misuse of funds.
A national moratorium on charter schools would stop the hemorrhaging of funds from traditional public schools.
A 2014 report by two anti-education-privatization organizations, the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education, found $136 million in fraud and abuse in 15 states. A follow-up study (PDF) in Pennsylvania revealed “charter school officials have defrauded at least $30 million intended for Pennsylvania schoolchildren since 1997.” Some of the questionable dealings may not be illegal because of the intricacies of state laws, but there is little doubt that public money is being wasted.
A recent review of charter school scandals in Florida and Michigan by The Washington Post listed numerous cases of real estate flipping, in which charter schools were used as vehicles for exorbitant profits. Michigan’s largest charter operator, National Heritage Academies gets a 16 percent return on its investment in rent from the state — nearly twice what most commercial properties receive.
A nationwide moratorium
Chicago and Philadelphia provide good examples for setting moratoriums on charter schools, but the freeze has been limited in both cities. Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission did not approve a new charter school in the last seven years. But the number of students enrolled at the existing charters continued to grow, doubling from 2007 to 2015. This year the commission approved five new charters — a regrettable reversal of the moratorium.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has declared that no new charter schools will be funded during the 2015–16 year. However, there is good reason to believe that he is simply playing politics and that he will not extend the moratorium. He faced a tough re-election battle, and the temporary halt was seen as an attempt to lure supporters of public education back into his camp. His poll numbers plunged in 2013 when he closed 50 neighborhood public schools, mostly in black and Hispanic neighborhoods that turned out for him in the 2011 election. His attempts to use the moratorium to appeal to disaffected voters shows that black and Latino parents, whom advocates of the charter industry insist want more charter schools, are hardly as enamored with charters as previously thought.
Nationwide, the expansion of charter schools continues unabated. Charter advocates report that 500 new charter schools opened during the 2014–15 school year, enrolling 348,000 students. One in 20 American students is enrolled in a charter school.
It is time for this to stop.
Charter advocates claim that they are data-driven technicians who pay attention to evidence of what works. But research does not support their preferred education policies. A national moratorium on charter schools would stop the hemorrhaging of funds from traditional public schools. It would also allow time to address the corruption that has plagued the charter industry. This would create an opportunity for some reflection on what actually works best for educating our children.
Amy B. Dean is a fellow of the Century Foundation and a principal of ABD Ventures, a consulting firm that works to develop innovative strategies for organizations devoted to social change. She is a co-author, with David Reynolds, of “A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement.”
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
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Sexual assault testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing triggers trauma, reports
Sexual assault testimony in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing triggers trauma, reports
The political became personal for many this week, as Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of sexual assault reopened old wounds for other victims — including two women who dramatically confronted a...
The political became personal for many this week, as Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of sexual assault reopened old wounds for other victims — including two women who dramatically confronted a key US senator Friday in a Capitol elevator.
Read the full article here.
2 months ago
2 months ago