New York State Exposed Education: We're Watching What Charter Schools do with your hard earned money
New York State Exposed Education: We're Watching What Charter Schools do with your hard earned money
NBC News - February 25, 2015, by Berkeley Brean - You know that hard earned money you pay the state and your local school district in taxes? Every year more of it goes to charter schools. $1.5...
NBC News - February 25, 2015, by Berkeley Brean - You know that hard earned money you pay the state and your local school district in taxes? Every year more of it goes to charter schools. $1.5 billion this year alone. So who's keeping an eye on that money to make sure it's not getting wasted? That's what we're digging into in our exclusive New York State Exposed Education report. The report outlining fraud and mismanagement by charter schools in New York is titled "Risking Public Money: New York Charter School Fraud." Click here to read the report
What would the reaction be if the superintendent or principal in your school district signed deals with their friends and contacts? We're going to lay out the facts and circumstances and you decide whether the charter school did something wrong or was being efficient.
Eugenio Maria de Hostos parent Jeremaine Curry says, "We want to give our kids the best foundation."
Jeremaine Curry made a choice. He wanted his son Jayden to be in a school he trusted, so he chose Eugenio Maria de Hostos -- the oldest charter school in the city. He says, "It gives our kids the best competitive advantage."
Eugenio is listed in the report that analyzed audits by the state comptroller's office. At Eugenio, the audit showed the school gave contracts to organizations either run by board members or friends of board members. For example, their first building? Owned by the Ibero Action League, the sponsor of the school and the rent was "set a bit higher."
The school pays $200,000 for Phys Ed at the downtown YMCA run by board member George Romell, $57,000 for music instruction from the Hochstein School of Music where board member Margaret Quackenbush teaches and $100,000 contract for cleaning services where the company's manager is a board member's brother.
Berkeley Brean: "Everybody who got hired or got that job either had a connection to the board or was a friend of yours."
Julio Vasquez, Chair of Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School: "Ah, not really. Here's what happened."
Vasquez says the non-profits they contract with were partners of the charter from day one.
Brean: "So you don't think you could have saved public money at all by putting out bids?"
Vasquez: "Not at all. Who in the community would...?”
Brean: "How would you know unless you did it?"
Vasquez: "I would not know."
The report says because of a general lack of oversight of charter schools, the state could lose $54 million in possible charter school fraud and mismanagement in one year. Regular district schools get audited at least once every five years. Charter schools can be audited, but only at the state comptroller's discretion. We tracked down Kyle Serrette -- the author of the report and we pressed him on the criticism of Eugenio.
Brean: "Is what they did all that bad?"
Kyle Serrette: "When they rented a facility without figuring out the fair market value was then that potentially wasted money."
Brean: "I mean, to me, it sounds like they were using the efficiencies that were at their fingertips."
Serrette: "They may have been doing the best they know how to do."
Serrette continues, "If you're going to enter into an agreement, you should see if there's a better deal elsewhere."
"Absolutely, I mean, that we didn't follow the procurement process in certain instances? I admit that and going forward, we will," says Vasquez. "But I have to also say that there are times when you have an emergency that you have to act and get it done. That's what we're all about."
Now, Eugenio Maria de Hostos has the second highest test scores of the 11 charters in Monroe County. Its charter just got re-approved by the state, so the state thinks it's doing a good job for children.
Source
As Atlanta Fed President Retires, Some Call For Diversity
As Atlanta Fed President Retires, Some Call For Diversity
The Federal Reserve has received a lot of criticism recently for its lack of diversity. The leaders of the central banking system are almost all white men.
But now that the president of one...
The Federal Reserve has received a lot of criticism recently for its lack of diversity. The leaders of the central banking system are almost all white men.
But now that the president of one of the Fed’s 12 regional banks in Atlanta is stepping down, some see an opportunity for change.
Several congressional lawmakers and the activist group Fed Up are calling on the agency to appoint the system’s first black president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
“The fed is the nerve center of our entire economic system, and nobody is suffering from an economic depression as the African-American community,” Congressman David Scott said.
The Georgia Democrat co-wrote a letter, along with Reps. John Lewis, Maxine Waters and John Conyers, to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on the issue.
Black workers still struggle, Scott said, even as the overall economy has recovered. The jobless rate for African Americans, for example, is more than double their white neighbors.
Outside an unemployment office on the west side of Atlanta, Formosa Williams is at her wit’s end.
“At this point, I don’t know what to do,” Williams said.
For years, Williams said she has struggled to find stable work.
“The only jobs that really seem to be hiring are like fast food,” Williams said. “And it’s no way I’m going to go back to that.”
Scott and the activists hope stories of minority workers, like Williams, will take a more prominent place in the central banking system’s discussions once it has a black regional president.
“Unless you have a voice at that table that has gone through the experience of being an African American, you’re missing so much,” said Scott.
The congressman and activists argue the appointment also makes sense, given the region the bank covers -- the South -- and that region’s history with civil rights.
But while many economists might agree that diversity is good, they aren’t all sure how it translates into policy.
“I think you have to start out with the recognition that our Federal Reserve officials have really one tool, and that’s interest rates,” said Tim Duy, an economics professor at the University of Oregon. “That tool is a very blunt instrument.”
That tool affects the broader economy at a macro-level, said Duy, who also authors a blog called Fed Watch. Meanwhile, he said, many of the problems facing African-American workers are at the micro-economic level.
“The Federal Reserve is not going to be a silver bullet to these issues,” Duy said.
The search for the next Atlanta Fed president is being led by a committee of business leaders from around the South.
The chair, Thomas Fanning, who is president of Southern Company, said they’re looking for the best person most of all.
And if he or she happens to make history, as the first African American?
“That would be a great thing,” Fanning said.
By STEPHANNIE STOKES
Source
Trump’s Presidential Electoral Commission: a partisan attack on political participation
09.11.17
NEW YORK –...
09.11.17
NEW YORK – Emma Greenman, director of the Voting Rights and Democracy campaign, for the Center for Popular Democracy, released the following statement ahead of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity’s second hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 12:
“Voting is one of our most sacred rights in our democracy. Trump’s sham commission on “election integrity” is undermining this very right to vote. This sham commission is operating under suspicious lack of transparency, gross partisanship and has revealed its unwillingness to address the actual threats to our democracy -- starting with the security breaches and hacking attempts that we saw in the last election to the increase of state restrictions targeting Black and Brown voters.
A simple look at the agenda for the September 12th commission meeting makes clear that this is just part of a “pernicious crusade to roll back voting rights”, as The Washington Post called it. The hearing line up exposes the true intent of this hearing. The lineup for this hearing provides further evidence that this is was never a bi-partisan attempt to improve the electoral system and help people to vote. Rather it is a cynical and calculated attempt by President Trump and his voter suppression allies to undermine faith in our elections in order to erect barriers to voter participation for purely partisan gain. We must reject any attempt to restrict participation to our democracy, including this alarming attempt to undermine trust in our elections and to skew elections by changing the rules to suppress the participation and vote of communities of color and young people.
Trump’s commission is a who’s who list of people with extensive histories of voter suppression and disenfranchisement of Black and Brown communities. Look no further than Hans Van Spakovsky, a member of the Commission also set to testify at the hearing, who led a crusade at the Department of Justice targeting minority voters and has championed state voting restrictions that limit voter participation. For the information released by the White House, it’s clear The commission plans to present questionable research and misleading evidence to justify their plan to further restrict the vote and limit access to the ballot."
The make-up and agenda of this commission is particularly troubling given Trump’s shameful response to the white supremacy on parade in Charlottesville. As business, labor and community leaders resigned from other White House commissions and councils because of Trump’s refusal to condemn the racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist movement march, not a single member of the Pence-Kobach Commission has considered resigning or questioned the Commission’s role in perpetuating the disenfranchisement of people of color.
Instead of making voting easier and safer, the Pence-Kobach commission is evidently promoting voter restrictions that would prevent millions of eligible voters from participating in our democracy. We need to be expanding participation and fighting for inclusive democracy where everyone's voice is heard. Promoting pro-voter reforms like automatic voter registration, same day registration and online voter registration proven to make our systems more accessible and secure and that encourage voter participation. "
###
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.
A Democratic Contender For Florida Governor Appears To Own Millions In Puerto Rican Debt
A Democratic Contender For Florida Governor Appears To Own Millions In Puerto Rican Debt
“If you are running to represent Puerto Ricans, and potentially harming Puerto Ricans through investments, then Puerto Ricans will hold you accountable,” said Julio López Varona of the Center for...
“If you are running to represent Puerto Ricans, and potentially harming Puerto Ricans through investments, then Puerto Ricans will hold you accountable,” said Julio López Varona of the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the leading activist groups on the Puerto Rican debt crisis. “There’s a question about what are those investments, and if that question is not answered that is extremely concerning.”
Read the full article here.
The fight to make bad jobs better
The fight to make bad jobs better
As of November 26, 2017, fast food companies in New York are required to post worker schedules 14 days in advance. If they change the schedule within that window, they will pay an extra fee to the...
As of November 26, 2017, fast food companies in New York are required to post worker schedules 14 days in advance. If they change the schedule within that window, they will pay an extra fee to the workers who are affected. And before they hire more people, they must offer the available hours to their existing part-time workers.
Read the full article here.
Be Our Guest: The downside of immigration reform is increased deportation of immigrants who don’t deserve it
New York Daily News - February 25, 2013 - Nisha Agarwal - President Obama and Congress have not addressed the federal Secure Communities program, which has created a deportation pipeline...
New York Daily News - February 25, 2013 - Nisha Agarwal - President Obama and Congress have not addressed the federal Secure Communities program, which has created a deportation pipeline that tears apart thousands of immigrant families.
In recent weeks, the federal fight for immigration reform kicked off in earnest, with Congress and the White House issuing their legislative principles, and the White House “leaking” specific proposals for a bill. Reform offers the bright possibility of legalization for 11 million, including more than 700,000 New Yorkers who live and work in, contribute to and sustain our richly diverse city and state. But the dark side of reform — its painful compromise — may be an increase in federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The Senate and the President’s proposals demand further fortification of the borders and better tracking of visa-holding immigrants. They also do not address the federal Secure Communities program, which has failed utterly in its objective to identify violent and dangerous criminals and, instead, creates a detention and deportation pipeline that has torn apart thousands of immigrant families.
New York City is poised to alter the terms of the national debate, however, by pushing back against Secure Communities and highlighting the destructive impact of the program for New York’s immigrant communities and the city itself. Recently, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito introduced two bills that will limit the extent to which the Department of Corrections and the NYPD collaborate with federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials through the Secure Communities program.
These bills, which are due to pass this week, build upon a law enacted in 2011 that would prevent the Department of Corrections from turning over to federal immigration authorities certain individuals being held at Riker’s Island who posed no public safety threat. Before this law went into effect, thousands of immigrant New Yorkers were held at Riker’s Island every year in order to be turned over to ICE for eventual deportation. A large segment of those held posed no threat to public safety, including those who were long-term, legal permanent residents, juveniles, people seeking asylum and protection under the Violence Against Women Act, victims of human trafficking and many individuals who may have been arrested for minor infractions such as selling merchandise on the street or hopping a turnstile. What is more, the city was under no legal obligation to hold these individuals for federal authorities, but it continued to do so, spending nearly $20 million a year in city funds to subsidize a senseless and harmful federal deportation process.The new law ended this practice, better focusing the city’s limited resources, targeting enforcement and ensuring that immigrant families were not afraid to step forward as victims and witnesses to crime or to interact with their local government.
With the enactment of Secure Communities in New York in May 2012, ICE has been able to “flag” immigrants moving through the criminal justice system far faster and earlier in the process than had previously been possible because it allows for the sharing of fingerprint data almost instantaneously between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and ICE. A bad system of indiscriminate immigration enforcement was made much worse under Secure Communities.
Now, New York City is once again faced with the challenge of having to subsidize and support a broken and deeply flawed federal immigration enforcement system. Immigrant New Yorkers are coming into our courts and through our police precincts at risk of being siphoned into deportation proceedings, even if they have committed no crime, are themselves victims of crime or domestic violence or have committed only minor status-related crimes such as driving without a license. Perversely, many immigrant defendants now arrive at arraignments already having been identified by ICE and therefore find it in their best interest to be sent to Riker’s Island rather than released on bail because they are at risk of being turned over to immigration authorities upon release.
The new bills introduced in the City Council will put a stop to these perverse outcomes, ensuring that individuals who have no criminal record, immigrants who have committed only low-level or some status-based offenses, and immigrant youth, among others, are not ensnared by the deportation dragnet when they pose no threat to the public.
This legislation was developed in partnership with Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD, as well as in collaboration with the immigrant community and others impacted by the harmful and inappropriate conflation of the criminal justice process with civil immigration enforcement. It is New York City speaking with one voice, reaffirming our collective values: the importance of trust between government and the people it serves; the commitment to diversity, openness and inclusion; and the enduring, stubborn passion to be a city that attracts and supports a world of talent and human potential. The proposed legislation is also New York’s call to the rest of the country, as national attention focuses on the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform.
The era of exclusion and impunity is over. We must choose a path forward that protects our families, sustains our communities and promotes the hard work and opportunity that boosts our economy.
Nisha Agarwal is deputy director of the Center for Popular Democracy (www.populardemocracy.org) and a lecturer at Columbia Law School.
Source
Protesters Stage 'Die-In' At Harvard Museum To Criticize Namesake's Link To Opioid Crisis
Protesters Stage 'Die-In' At Harvard Museum To Criticize Namesake's Link To Opioid Crisis
Several organizations, including the Center for Popular Democracy, SIFMA NOW, ACT UP Boston, participated in the protest.
...
Several organizations, including the Center for Popular Democracy, SIFMA NOW, ACT UP Boston, participated in the protest.
Read the full article here.
Demonstrators from Arizona chant, "Kill the bill or lose your job" while sitting on the floor outside the offices of Republican Senator Jeff Flake during a protest against health-care reform legislation
Demonstrators from Arizona chant, "Kill the bill or lose your job" while sitting on the floor outside the offices of Republican Senator Jeff Flake during a protest against health-care reform legislation
Demonstrators from Arizona chant, "Kill the bill or lose your job" while sitting on the floor outside the offices of Republican Senator Jeff Flake during a protest against health-care reform...
Demonstrators from Arizona chant, "Kill the bill or lose your job" while sitting on the floor outside the offices of Republican Senator Jeff Flake during a protest against health-care reform legislation in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 10, 2017, in Washington, D.C. More than 100 people from across the country were arrested during the protest, which was organized by Housing Works and the Center for Popular Democracy.
See the photograph here.
Secrecy Surrounds Half Billion Handout to Charters
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while the public is being kept in the dark about which states have applied for the...
The U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while the public is being kept in the dark about which states have applied for the lucrative grants, and what their actual track records are when it comes to preventing fraud and misuse.
Already the federal government has spent $3.3 billion in American tax dollars under the Charter Schools Program (CSP), as tallied by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
But the government has done so without requiring any accountability from the states and schools that receive the money, as CMD revealed earlier this year.
Throwing good money after bad, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for a 48 percent increase in federal charter funding earlier this year, and the House and Senate budget proposals also call for an increase—albeit a more modest one—while at the same time slashing education programs for immigrants and language learners.
The clamor for charter expansion comes despite the fact that there are federal probes underway into suspected waste and mismanagement within the program, not to mention ongoing and recently completed state audits of fraud perpetrated by charter school operators.
Earlier this year, the Center for Popular Democracy documented more than $200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry in 15 states alone, a number that is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Is now really the right time to plow more tax money into charters?
Insiders Deliberate Far from the Public Eye
The Department of Education is currently deciding what states to award $116 million this year, and more than half a billion during the five-year grant cycle.
So who is in the running and what are their track records?
Which states have applied for a grant designed to eviscerate the public school system in the name of “flexibility?” (CMD's review of state applications and reviewers' comments from the previous grant cycle exposed “flexibility” as a term of art used by the industry for state laws that allow charter schools to: operate independently from locally elected school boards, employ people to teach without adequate training or certification, and avoid collective bargaining that helps ensure that teacher-student ratios are good so that each kid gets the attention he or she deserves.)
There is no way of knowing.
The U.S Department of Education has repeatedly refused to honor a CMD request under the Freedom of Information Act for the grant applications, even though public information about which states have applied would not chill deliberation and might even help better assess which applicants should receive federal money.
The agency has even declined to provide a list with states that have applied:
“We cannot release a list of states that have applied while it is in the midst of competition."
The upshot of this reticence is that states will land grants—possibly to the tune of a hundred million dollars or more in some cases—all at the discretion of charter school interests contracted to evaluate the applications, but without any input from ordinary citizens and advocates concerned about public schools and troubled by charter school secrecy and fraud.
But, if people in a state know that a state is applying they can weigh in so that the agency is not just hearing from an applicant who wants the money, regardless of the history of fraud and waste in that state.
Charter Millions by Hook or by Crook: The Case of Ohio
Despite ED’s unwillingness to put all the cards on the table, state reports tell us that Ohio has once again applied for a grant under the program.
The state, whose lax-to-non-existing charter school laws are an embarrassment even to the industry, has previously been awarded at least $49 million in CSP money—money that went to schools overseen by a rightwing think-tank, and, more worryingly, to schools overseen by an authorizer that had its performance rating boosted this year by top education officials who removed the failing virtual schools from the statistics so as not to stop the flow of state and federal funds.
As The Plain Dealer put it in an exposé: “It turns out that Ohio’s grand plan to stop the national ridicule of its charter school system is giving overseers of many of the lowest-performing schools a pass from taking heat for some of their worst problems.”
Another component of this plan, it turns out, was to apply for more federal millions to the failing schools that—by a miraculous sleight of hand—are no longer failing.
The director of Ohio’s Office of Quality School Choice, David Hansen, fell on the sword and announced his resignation in June. But Democratic lawmakers suspect that this goes higher up in the chain of command, and have called on State Superintendent Richard Ross to resign.
Did the scrubbed statistics touting the success of Ohio’s charters find its way into the state application for federal millions, signed by Superintendent Ross?
What about other states, such as Indiana, with a similar history of doctoring data to turn failing charter schools into resounding success stories?
After Abysmal Results, States Re-apply for More Money
While the known unknowns are troubling, the known knowns—to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld—are also equally disturbing.
For example, Colorado applied for grant renewal this year.
But, the last time around, in 2010, the state landed a $46 million CSP grant thanks in no small part to the lax “hiring and firing” rules and the lack of certification requirements for charter school teachers--a reviewer contracted by the U.S. Department of Education to score the application noted.
Look at California.
Through meeting minutes from the California State Board of Education we also know that the Golden State submitted an application this year. In 2010, California was awarded $254 million over five years in CSP money, but as the Inspector General discovered in a 2012 audit, the state department of education did not adequately monitor any of the schools that received sub-grants. Some schools even received federal money “without ever opening to students.” A review by CMD revealed that a staggering 9 out of the 41 schools that shuttered in the 2014-'15 school year were created by federal money under CSP.
How about Wisconsin?
Wisconsin received $69.6 million between 2010 and 2015, but out of the charter schools awarded sub-grants during the first two years of the cycle, one-fifth (16 out of 85) have closed since, as CMD discovered.
Then there’s Indiana.
Indiana was awarded $31.3 million over the same period, partly because of the fact that charter schools in the state are exempt from democratic oversight by elected school boards. “[C]harter schools are accountable solely to authorizers under Indiana law,” one reviewer enthused, awarding the application 30/30 under the rubric “flexibility offered by state law.”
This “flexibility” has been a recipe for disaster in the Hoosier state with countless examples of schools pocketing the grant money and then converting to private schools, as CMD discovered by taking a closer look at grantees under the previous cycle:
The Indiana Cyber Charter School opened in 2012 with $420,000 in seed money from the federal program. Dogged by financial scandals and plummeting student results the charter was revoked in 2015 and the school last month leaving 1,100 students in the lurch.
Padua Academy lost its charter in 2014 and converted to a private religious school, but not before receiving $702,000 in federal seed money.
Have They Learned Anything?
Secretary Duncan has previously called for “absolute transparency” when it comes to school performance, but that’s just a talking point unless he releases the applications, or even a list of the states that are in the running, before they are given the final stamp of approval.
As it stands, there is no way of knowing if the state departments of education seeking millions in tax dollars:
Have supplied actual performance data that reflect the reality for students enrolled in charter schools rather than “scrubbed” or doctored numbers;
Try to outbid each other in “flexibility” by explaining, say, how charter schools in X can hire teachers without a license and fire them without cause. In its 2010 application, the Colorado Department of Education, for example, boasted of how charter school teachers are “employed at will by the school”;
Have corrective action plans so as to avoid repeating the costly waste and mistakes from the previous grant cycle (such as schools created by federal seed money closing within a few years or never even opening).
Because the federal charter schools program is designed to foster charter school growth, which in turn means that money will be diverted from traditional public schools to an industry that resists government enforcement of basic standards for financial controls, accountability, and democratic oversight, the public has a big stake in this and a right to know more, before their money disappears down black holes.
Source: PR Watch
Arizona special election 2018: ALS patient and activist Ady Barkan stumps for Democrat Hiral Tipirneni
Arizona special election 2018: ALS patient and activist Ady Barkan stumps for Democrat Hiral Tipirneni
Be a Hero is an offshoot of the Center for Popular Democracy’s CPD Action group (Barkan previously worked for the center) and will concentrate on boosting Democratic candidates focused on...
Be a Hero is an offshoot of the Center for Popular Democracy’s CPD Action group (Barkan previously worked for the center) and will concentrate on boosting Democratic candidates focused on protecting health care and entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, as well as ousting Republican incumbents who voted for the GOP tax plan or have voiced support for cutting entitlements.
Read the full article here.
2 days ago
2 days ago