CPD IN THE NEWS

SCTimes - March 13, 2013, by Annette Meeks - Late last month, the Minnesota Department of Education released new data regarding Minnesota's high school graduation rate. The good news from the department, according to the Star Tribune, is that the "graduation rate for Minnesota students is the highest it's been in a decade, even though many minority students continue to lag behind their white peers when it comes to getting a diploma on time."

The new data showed that in 2013, "85 percent of white students, 56 percent of black students and 58 percent of Hispanic students graduated." Minnesota is not alone — many other states show an increase in the number of students leaving high school with a diploma. In 2014, according to the Star Tribune, the U.S. graduation rate was the highest it has been in 40 years when nearly "78 percent of high school students nationwide graduated on time."

What happens to a Minnesotan who doesn't earn a high school diploma? Those students face daunting challenges in life because the public education system has failed them. Instead of a celebratory front page news story, these students become a statistic in a report issued by the Center for Popular Democracy. Hardly part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy." The Center for Popular Democracy's "partners" include the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO, to name just a few.

According to a recently released report by the center, "Minnesota has the third-highest unemployment gap between white and black people in the country — with the jobless rate among blacks almost four times higher than among whites."

Minnesota's astonishing statewide high rate of unemployment among African-Americans "fell" to 11.9 percent in 2014, down from a previous high of 15.4 percent seven years earlier. In 2014, the white unemployment rate in the state was 3.2 percent.

In 2013, the Star Tribune reported that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Minnesota was second only to Wyoming [where the] black unemployment rate was triple the white rate." There was virtually no change in the Minnesota's Hispanic unemployment rate (7 percent), which remains at nearly twice the rate of white unemployment.

Furthermore, according to a report on BringMetheNews.com and WalletHub, "Minnesota has the second-worst wealth gap between white people and people of color in the United States."

So while officials at the Minnesota Department of Education continue celebrating the improving graduation rate, we'll postpone any celebrations. We'll wait until there is no achievement gap for minority students that attend (and graduate on time from) Minnesota's public schools. That will be worth celebrating.

This is the opinion of Annette Meeks, founder and CEO of Freedom Foundation Of Minnesota.

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Donald Trump's idea of humanitarian aid to Puerto Rico is throwing paper towel rolls to a crowd. His callous and grandstanding attitude following Hurricane Maria's devastation is breathtaking, even for a man who uses a golden toilet. His cheap imitation of a T-shirt cannon was enough to make America collectively throw the phones we watched it on into the sea. If you're looking for less expensive ways to channel your rage, consider donating time, money or supplies to organizations and individuals on the ground in Puerto Rico.

Read the full article here.

A former aide to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has broken ranks with his former employer and issued a blueprint for a sweeping reform of the U.S. central bank, including regular government audits and shorter term limits for policy makers.

Dartmouth College professor Andrew Levin targeted four areas of change for the Federal Reserve system: make the Fed a fully public institution; ensure the process of picking regional Fed presidents is transparent; set seven-year term limits for regional presidents and Board governors; and make the entire Fed subject to external review.

The proposals were taken up by the union-backed activist group Fed Up, which promoted them Monday in a conference call with journalists, and come during an election year where the central bank has been a campaign topic.

“There is one key principle in this document which is the Fed needs to become a public institution,” Levin said. “Pragmatic, reasonable Fed reform should be able to be passed by the Congress, by both parties. That is my hope.”

The Dartmouth professor worked two decades at the Fed, and was a special adviser from 2010 to 2012 to former chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and Yellen when she was vice chair, according to his biography page at the university.

Legislative Plans

Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives last year proposed legislation that included reforms of the central bank, though none has become law. Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith declined to comment.

As recently as February, Yellen said that while the Fed might be structured differently if it were created today, she believed it still worked well and wasn’t “broken.”

“Of course the structure could be something different and it’s up to Congress to decide that -- I certainly respect that,” she said at a Senate hearing. “I simply mean to say I don’t think it’s broken the way it is.”

The Fed system, which sets interest rates for the U.S. economy, is made up of a Board of Governors in Washington and 12 regional Fed banks. It was created by an act of Congress, yet private banks hold stock in the regional Fed institutions as a result of the way the capital structure was set up when the Fed was born more than a century ago.

“The Federal Reserve is the only central bank that I know of that isn’t a fully public central bank,” Levin said in an interview.

Levin said the 12 regional banks should become fully public entities, meaning they have to somehow eliminate or repurchase the stock they have issued to private member banks. He also proposed banning anyone affiliated with financial institutions overseen by the Fed from serving as a regional Fed director.

Three Classes

Each regional Fed has a nine-member board of directors which includes three Class A directors who represent private member banks, three Class B directors picked by the private banks to represent the public -- typically local business people -- and three Class C directors chosen to represent the public by the Fed board in Washington.

The presence of financial interests on Fed boards has been a long-standing source of criticism. Currently, for example, James Gorman, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, sits on the New York Fed Board as a Class A director.

Prior the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act in 2010, Class A directors also helped pick the 12 regional Fed bank presidents, subject to the approval of the board in Washington. That potential conflict of interest, with bankers appointing their own supervisors, was limited by Dodd-Frank, which restricted the selection process to Class B and Class C directors.

Levin said the current system of picking Fed presidents, which is led by regional board directors, is too secretive. He recommended the reserve bank boards accept nominations from the public, publish a list of eligible nominees, and then engage in a “selection process that involves genuine public participation.”

The Dartmouth professor also said that the entire Fed system should be subject to “external reviews” and disclosure requirements “just like every other key public agency.”

“The Government Accountability Office should produce a regular annual review of all aspects of the Fed’s policies, procedures, management, and operations,” Levin wrote in his proposal. The Fed has strenuously objected to calls by Republican lawmakers that monetary policy decisions be subject to GAO audit. In the interview, Levin said the GAO should focus on the management and operations of the Fed system, “not so much on monetary policy.”

“Part of the financial crisis was due to mismanagement in the division of supervision at the Fed,” Levin said in an interview. GAO reviews would provide assurance to the public and Congress that the “Fed is a well-managed organization,” he said.

By Craig Torres

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Five students are suing the state for a better education — for some.

In September, five anonymous students filed a suit against the state in Suffolk County Superior Court alleging the cap on the number of charter schools in Massachusetts unfairly denies them their right to a quality education. The students had entered charter lotteries, but failed to win coveted spots in one of the public-ish schools. Instead, the students say, they were assigned to attend schools in their home districts that had been deemed “underperforming” by the state.

Since No Child Left Behind, school reform has been more concerned with helping some children find ways out of the traditional public school system than improving education for everyone. Charter schools are a symptom of this escapist philosophy, which is unfortunate because the idea of a charter school education is a good one.

Typically founded by nonprofits and members of the community, charter schools often concentrate education around one subject. Locally, these concentrations include the arts, social justice, and Mandarin. Students enroll in charters through a blind lottery that anyone can enter. Placing students in schools that encourage their passions is excellent education. And it produces some positive results. For example, in 2013, Credo, an independent education research firm, analyzed the impact charter schools have had on Massachusetts. In math and reading, researchers found that charter school students perform better in the subjects compared to those in traditional public schools.

The problem with charter schools is the education provided comes at the cost of traditional public schools. Charter schools are publicly funded, but work independently of a hometown district. Last year in Massachusetts, participating school districts paid charter schools $369.7 million to educate students. Charters receive per-student fees from sending districts — money that would otherwise stay in the home school’s till. Children fleeing an underperforming school district take money with them that is needed to improve the local education system.

I’m not proposing students be forced to attend failing schools. A student should have the choice to attend the school that best fits her educational needs. I am asking the state’s politicians to take a hard look at how charters are managed, funded, and how students are enrolled – because the current system is inadequate. Earlier this month, Gov. Charlie Baker proposed a bill that would increase the number of charter schools in the state. The bill would permit 12 new or expanded charter schools each year in districts performing in the bottom 25 percent on standardized tests. Massachusetts already has 81 charter schools with a waiting list of 37,000 students. A bill to expand the cap on charter schools in the state passed the House last year, but floundered in the Senate.

Here’s what needs to happen with charters:

Improve special education and non-native English speaker recruitment: While charters typically serve about the same number of low-income students — and more students of color — as traditional public school systems, they enroll far fewer non-native English speakers and students with special education needs. The Credo audit found that in traditional Massachusetts public schools that send children to charters, 17 percent of students received special education services, whereas in charter schools this population made up 12 percent of the student body. Traditional public schools had 10 percent English language learners in the student body, while charters had 6 percent.

Submit to School Committee authority: Charters don’t play by the same rules as traditional public schools. The schools aren’t subject to the authority of an elected school committee and have a legal pass around some of the state’s educational and special education requirements.

There’s good reason for more oversight. Private management of charter schools. A new report claims more than $200 million in fraud and wasted taxpayer funds has been lost to the charter school sector (“The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse” by Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy). It’s hard to say whether this same kind of scandal could occur in Massachusetts. Charter schools need to, at the very least, be subject to more public scrutiny and submit to the budgeting and policy authority of a local, elected school committee.

Analyze funding strategy: Charter schools should not be succeeding at the cost of the education of students in underperforming districts. Something must be done that will allow students to pick the education that is best for them without penalizing struggling schools.

The student plantiffs suing for their right to attend charter schools say the state charter cap unfairly denies their right to a quality education, but that right cannot come at the cost of the rest of Massachusetts’ students.•

Source: Valley Advocate