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An earlier review identified the "Three Big Sins of Charter Schools": fraud, a lack of transparency, and the exclusion of unwanted students. The evidence against charters continues to grow. Yet except for its reporting on a few egregious examples of charter malfeasance and failure, the mainstream media continues to echo the sentiments of privatization-loving billionaires who believe their wealth somehow equates to educational wisdom.

The Wall Street Journal, in its misinformed way, says that the turnaround of public schools requires "increasing options for parents, from magnet to charter schools." Wrong. As the NAACP affirms, our nation needs "free, high-quality, fully and equitably-funded public education for all children." For all children, not just a select few.

The NAACP has called for a moratorium on charter schools. And Diane Ravitch makes a crucial point: "Would [corporate reformers] still be able to call themselves leaders of the civil rights issue of our time if the NAACP disagreed with their aggressive efforts to privatize public schools?"

Here are the four big sins of charter schools, updated by a surge of new evidence:

1. Starve the Beast

Corporate-controlled spokesgroups ALEC, US Chamber of Commerce, and Americans for Prosperity are drooling over school privatization and automated classrooms, with a formula described by The Nation: "Use standardized tests to declare dozens of poor schools 'persistently failing'; put these under the control of a special unelected authority; and then have that authority replace the public schools with charters." But as aptly expressed by Jeff Bryant, "As a public school loses a percentage of its students to charters, the school can’t simply cut fixed costs for things like transportation and physical plant proportionally...So instead, the school cuts a program or support service."

It's an insidious and ongoing process, aided and abetted by business-friendly mainstream media outlets, to convince Americans that "every family for itself" is better than the mutual support and cooperation of a public school system.

2. Cream and Segregate and Discard

Urban charter schools primarily enroll low-income minority students. That seems admirable upon first reflection, but selective admissions of the best students from ANY community will make an individual school look good, leading to the belief that the concept will work on a larger scale. Success is much harder to achieve if a school accommodates special needs and English-learner students.

Numerous sources reveal the high degree of segregation in charter schools -- white or black, and by income and special need.

As expressed in the report "Failing the Test," "School choice is just that — except that charter schools are doing the choosing instead of communities."

It gets worse. Prominent New York charter network Success Academy has been accused of "counseling out" students who are low-performing or disruptive or otherwise difficult to teach. Even worse are charters that shut down, stranding hundreds of students, while their business operators can just move on to their next project. Nearly 2,500 charter schools closed their doors from 2001 to 2013, leaving over a quarter of a million kids temporarily without a school.

3. Scream 'Public' to Get Tax Money, Plead 'Private' to Hide Salary Data

Charter schools are increasingly run by private companies, or by private trusts. The National Labor Relations Board affirms that charters are private, not public.

As private entities, they are unregulated and lacking in transparency, and, as concluded by the Center for Media and Democracy, they have become a "black hole" into which the federal government has dumped an outrageous $3.7 billion over two decades with little accountability to the public.

4. Engage in "Fraud, Waste, Abuse, and Mismanagement"

That's how the Center for Popular Democracy describes charter performance in 2015, during which the schools wasted an estimated $1.4 billion of taxpayer money. The fraud is far-reaching, with examples from around the country:

The Department of Education audited 33 charter schools and concluded: "We determined that charter school relationships with CMOs (charter management organizations) posed a significant risk to Department program objectives."

In California, charter performance is so poor that even the National Association of Charter Authorizers is calling on the state to better control the authorization of such schools. At present, there are almost no restrictions on opening a charter school, and existing schools are restrictive in their enrollment policies.

Because of charters, Michigan cities have lost nearly half (46.5%) of their revenue over the past 10 years. Detroit, which is surpassed only by New Orleans in the number of charter students, half of the charter schools perform only as well as, or worse than, traditional public schools. A federal study found an "unreasonably high" number of charters among the lowest-rated public schools in the state.

In Louisiana, according to the Center for Popular Democracy, "charter schools have experienced millions in known losses from fraud and financial mismanagement so far, which is likely just the tip of the iceberg."

According to PR Watch, Florida "has one of the worst records in the nation when it comes to fraud and lack of charter school oversight." Texas has an unknown number of charters housed in churches. Nine charters in Washington remain open despite being declared unconstitutional by the state's Supreme Court.

Ohio might be worst of all. Since the 2006-07 school year, 37 percent of the state's charter schools receiving federal grants have either closed or never opened. An Ohio newspaper reported, "No sector – not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals – misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio."

The Big Picture

Despite student selection advantages, charter schools generally perform no better than public schools, according to the most recent CREDO study and as summarized by the nonpartisan Spencer Foundation and Public Agenda: "There is very little evidence that charter and traditional public schools differ meaningfully in their average impact on students' standardized test performance." As for technology-based schools, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools admits that "The well-documented, disturbingly low performance by too many full-time virtual charter public schools should serve as a call to action to state leaders and authorizers across the country."

Charter schools have turned our children into the products of businesspeople. Americans need to know how important it is to get the profit motive out of education, and to provide ALL our children the same educational opportunities.

By Paul Buchheit

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Crain's New York Business - July 8, 2014, by Chris Bragg - An initiative creating an identification card for New York City residents could allow hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to open bank accounts, where identification is required. That is just one way the law could boost the city's economy, according to advocates for the card, though thorny security concerns for the city remain unresolved.

Aimed at making life easier for the city's half-million undocumented immigrants, the bill to create a municipal identification card was passed by the City Council last month, and Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to sign it. A secondary impact could be boosting immigrants' spending and entrepreneurship, say advocates.

"The multiplier effect of the municipal ID is going to be huge because of the financial empowerment aspect," said Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. "People who don't have IDs or a bank account can't participate in the financial system."

Applicants for the cards, which the city is expected to begin issuing in late 2014 or early 2015, will have to prove their identities with birth certificates or passports from any country. They will also have to prove their city residency with documents such as utility bills or pay stubs.

The cards will include a person's name, picture, address and date of birth. But questions remain whether that will be enough for banks, which have security concerns and have not yet publicly committed to accepting the IDs. For one, undocumented immigrants do not have Social Security numbers.

Mr. Choi believes these immigrants could apply for Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs), a tax-processing number for which foreign workers can apply. Banks currently have inconsistent polices on whether to accept ITINs in lieu of Social Security numbers, but Mr. Choi thinks that having the city government's full weight behind the initiative will prod the institutions to accept them.

Banks have concerns about the cards being secure enough, and fear that accounts could be used for money laundering. Whether or not banks large and small decide to accept the ID cards will likely rest on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and state Department of Financial Services giving their sign-offs, according to Brian Blake, vice president of Spring Bank, a community lender that focuses primarily on low-income and underserved neighborhoods.

"There are a lot of banks that have flexibility above the minimum requirements to open an account, and below that minimum there's no flexibility," Mr. Blake said. "We try to be as open-minded as possible, as far as the regulators allow."

Although the City Council overwhelmingly passed the bill, the measure faced opposition from the chamber's three Republican members, who cited security concerns. Republicans in Albany are set to make the cards a campaign issue in the 2014 election, saying they legitimize immigrants who are here illegally and create the potential for fraud and abuse.

Another key question is whether a broad swath of New Yorkers—not just undocumented immigrants—will apply for the municipal ID cards. Advocates say that for immigrants to avoid being stigmatized, card ownership must extend beyond those living here illegally.

To that end, the city is planning on putting benefits such as discounts to museums on the cards.

That could encourage a whole new population to take in New York's cultural institutions—including both undocumented immigrants and citizens—although the details have yet to be worked out. Cities that have passed municipal ID laws, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Haven, Conn., have employed these incentives.

The cards are also intended to ease holders' abilities to sign leases and give them access to government buildings, which often require identification, said Andrew Friedman, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York-based group that released a study on the impact of similar laws around the country.

That could make it easier for entrepreneurial immigrants to deal with regulators and other gatekeepers of the area's economy.

"For immigrant-owned small businesses and vendors seeking to open and get a license, it makes a huge difference," Mr. Friedman said.

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Oh, what a difference a year can make.

Last July, Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen endured criticism for House testimony in which she seemed to imply that there was little the Fed could do to address the disproportionately high African-American unemployment rate.

Not so on Tuesday. In her semi-annual testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen emphasized that the failure of the economic recovery to reach communities of color influences the Fed’s decision-making, and made a strong commitment to improving diversity at the central bank.

“Jobless rates have declined for all major demographic groups, including for African Americans and Hispanics,” Yellen said, according to her prepared remarks. “Despite these declines, however, it is troubling that unemployment rates for these minority groups remain higher than for the nation overall, and that the annual income of the median African-American household is still well below the median income of other U.S. households.”

Yellen’s policy argument has not fundamentally changed. It is the Fed’s job to maximize employment in the economy as the whole, she says, and it lacks the tools to target particular communities. And the Fed chief has clarified since last summer that she takes seriously how the Fed’s adjustment of interest rates can have an especially big impact on African Americans and Latinos, who have higher jobless rates.

But Yellen’s remarks and actions on Tuesday represent the Fed’s greatest demonstration yet that it is putting the concerns of communities of color front and center on its agenda.

The Fed Up campaign, a coalition of progressive groups that has led the push to make the Federal Reserve more responsive to workers in general, and communities of color in particular, was pleased with the focus of Yellen’s testimony.

“Each time since Yellen spoke last July, when she got pushback over what she said, she has gotten a little bit better,” said Jordan Haedtler, Fed Up’s campaign manager. “Now she is proactively showing that the Fed is assessing this data and does take this data into account.”

Diversity is an extremely important goal and I will do everything I can to further advance it.

This week’s hearings, held every six months in both chambers of Congress — the House will hold its hearing on Wednesday — are an opportunity for the Fed chair to update lawmakers about the overall state of the economy. As part of the briefing, the Fed releases an accompanying monetary policy report summarizing its economic assessment and research.

For the first time, the Fed chose to devote a section of its report to whether the “gains of the economic expansion [have] been widely shared.” That section focused on how the recovery affected different races and ethnicities differently.

The results are discouraging. Despite years of job growth, the rates of full-time work for African Americans and Latinos are a few percentage points lower than they were before the recession, while the rates among white and Asian-American workers have more or less reached pre-recession levels. And the median income of black households, which took the biggest hit of any group during the recession, has also been slower to recover, reaching only 88 percent of what it was in 2007, compared with about 94 percent for the other three groups.

Responding to a question about the new section from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Yellen insisted that weighing the disparate impact of economic growth on a range of different groups is a key part of the Fed’s mission.

“There are very significant differences in success in the labor market across demographic groups,” she said. “It is important for us to be aware of those differences and to focus on them as we think about monetary policy and the broader work that the Federal Reserve does in the area of community development and trying to make sure that financial services are widely available to those that need it, including low- and moderate-income [households].”

Yellen also recognized the importance of diversity — of race, gender, professional background and ideology — within the Fed’s ranks in ensuring the bank remains sensitive to a broad array of Americans’ economic experiences.

She touted her creation of a task force in the Fed to improve its gender and ethnic diversity, but acknowledged there is more to be done.

“Diversity is an extremely important goal and I will do everything I can to further advance it,” Yellen said.

Progressive groups and their allies in Congress trying to make the Fed more accountable to the public have focused on increasing diversity and reducing Wall Street’s influence at the central bank. Eleven senators, including Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and 116 House members sent a letter to Yellen on May 12 urging her to prioritize the diversity of Fed officials, especially at the 12 regional Fed banks, which are privately owned. (Hillary Clinton expressed similar sentiments in a statement later that day.)

The makeup of the regional Fed bank boards is important because they are dominated by the big banks and have free reign to appoint their presidents. The regional Fed bank presidents hold five seats on the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank panel that adjusts the benchmark interest rate. Currently, regional Fed presidents make up half of the FOMC’s influential votes.

As a result, the Fed officials with the power to raise interest rates and effectively increase unemployment are selected by people who are disproportionately white, male and from the finance and business sectors.

In the interests of changing that, the Fed Up campaign on Monday released a slate of 39 candidates for the regional Federal Reserve bank boards of directors. The candidates not only reflect racial and gender diversity, but also come exclusively from academic institutions, community groups and labor organizations.

“On racial and gender diversity there has been modest progress, though it has not taken place at the rate we would like to see,” Haedtler said. Haedtler added that there is even greater room for improvement when it comes to the diversity of professional backgrounds of board members and other top Fed officials, an area where he said there has been “regression” under Yellen’s watch.

By Daniel Marans

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Marta tiene dificultad para encontrar trabajo últimamente. Con frecuencia, cuando va a solicitar empleo haciendo comida o labores domésticas, lo primero que le preguntan es, “¿Habla inglés?” Marta siempre responde la verdad, que solo sabe un poco.

Con frecuencia, los empleadores la rechazan porque quieren personas que dominen el inglés. “Estos días, la verdad que es muy difícil conseguir trabajo”, dijo Marta.

La ciudad de Nueva York tiene la población inmigrante más diversa entre todas las grandes metrópolis del mundo. Los inmigrantes constituyen más de 40%  de la población y casi la mitad de la fuerza laboral de la ciudad.

Pero la ciudad enfrenta una paradoja: si bien la tasa de empleo entre los inmigrantes es más alta que la de los oriundos de Nueva York, un porcentaje desproporcionado de aquellos tienen empleos con poca paga, sus ingresos promedio son más bajos que los de las personas nacidas allí y, con frecuencia, se ven más afectados por la pobreza. Muchos de ellos, al igual que Marta, tienen conocimientos limitados de inglés, lo que puede dificultar que encuentren un trabajo bien remunerado.

Desde que el alcalde de Nueva York Bill de Blasio asumió el mando hace poco más de dos años, la ciudad ha comenzado a reestructurar el sistema de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, lo que crea una oportunidad importante de eliminar las injusticias que enfrentan los neoyorquinos inmigrantes.

El nuevo marco de la ciudad para su sistema de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, llamado Career Pathways, promete invertir un nivel sin precedente de fondos en capacitación laboral y educación orientado a los trabajadores más vulnerables de la ciudad, para asegurar que la inversión de la ciudad en la fuerza laboral sea uniforme en las diversas agencias municipales y colaborar con los empleadores y otras partes interesadas a fin de mejorar la calidad de los empleos con salarios más bajos en la ciudad.

Ahora que se está implementando el nuevo marco para el desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, se debe aprovechar la oportunidad para asegurar que se atiendan las necesidades de la numerosa fuerza laboral inmigrante de Nueva York. La gran mayoría de los trabajadores en las ocupaciones de mayor crecimiento en la ciudad, desde auxiliares de servicios de salud a domicilio hasta obreros de construcción, enfermeros diplomados y programadores de computadoras, son inmigrantes. Como tal, los trabajadores inmigrantes son fundamentales para la vitalidad económica de la ciudad, y su éxito debe ser primordial en la reforma del sistema laboral de la ciudad.

Los trabajadores inmigrantes y postulantes a empleo enfrentan muchas barreras singulares que limitan su superación en la fuerza laboral. Por ejemplo, un número considerable de inmigrantes no hablan inglés bien y tienen, en promedio, un nivel más bajo de educación formal.

Al mismo tiempo, hay miles de inmigrantes con grados universitarios u otras credenciales educativas que no se reconocen en Estados Unidos y, por lo tanto, no tienen otra opción que realizar trabajos en los que no se aprovechan del todo sus aptitudes y talento. Además, entre los trabajadores con salarios bajos, que son mayormente inmigrantes, la explotación es algo común. Esto es particularmente cierto en el caso de los trabajadores indocumentados y quienes trabajan en la economía informal.

El éxito del plan de Career Pathways depende de su capacidad de eliminar las principales barreras que enfrentan los neoyorquinos inmigrantes. Un informe preparado conjuntamente por el Center for Popular Democracy y Center for an Urban Future identifica estas barreras y describe una estrategia coordinada para enfrentar los obstáculos que impiden que los trabajadores inmigrantes alcancen plenamente su potencial.

Específicamente, la ciudad y las entidades privadas que financian la fuerza laboral deben invertir en clases de inglés, educación de adultos y programas de capacitación y titulación para trabajadores con diversos niveles educativos y de dominio de inglés. Esto les permitiría aprender las destrezas que necesitan para ser competitivos en la fuerza laboral y evitaría que se estanquen en empleos con poca paga.

En segundo lugar, la ciudad debe asegurar que los trabajadores inmigrantes estén enterados de estos servicios al asegurarse de que se ofrezcan en los vecindarios donde los inmigrantes viven o trabajan. Una gran manera de hacerlo es asociarse con organizaciones sin fines de lucro en las comunidades inmigrantes y asegurar que los fondos disponibles estén llegando a los programas laborales en las comunidades inmigrantes.

Finalmente,  una estrategia de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral que es eficaz para los inmigrantes debe mejorar la calidad de los empleos con salarios bajos que ocupan a tantos de ellos. Esto incluye mejorar las leyes de protección laboral y velar por su cumplimiento, algo que con frecuencia no se hace, además de lograr un sueldo mínimo más alto y acceso a licencia pagada por enfermedad. Los mismos empleadores son una parte importante de esta conversación, y la ciudad debe usar su influencia para ayudarlos a mejorar la calidad de sus empleos peor pagados.

Sin un enfoque coordinado para asegurar que los servicios de desarrollo laboral estén atendiendo a los inmigrantes, el plan de la ciudad corre el riesgo de pasar por alto a un grupo enorme de trabajadores y personas que buscan empleo. En este momento tenemos la oportunidad de asegurar que se incluyan a los inmigrantes como parte esencial de este plan.

By Kate Hamaji  & Christian González-Rivera

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