U.S. Department of Education Launches Crackdown on Ohio Charters
Charter Schools are defined by their freedom from regulation and oversight, but that freedom has been so regularly...
Charter Schools are defined by their freedom from regulation and oversight, but that freedom has been so regularly abused by unscrupulous operators that it seems the U.S. Department of Education is finally deciding to crack down, under pressure in this case from Ohio’s U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown.
Three months ago, on June 20, 2016, Senator Brown wrote a letter to John King, now U.S. Secretary of Education, demanding increased oversight of a large grant—$71 million—the federal Department of Education made to Ohio on September 28, 2015 to expand charter schools. The grant application had been written by David Hansen, who, by September, had already been fired by the Ohio Department of Education for hiding the abysmal academic record of the state’s so-called “dropout recovery schools” and omitting their scores from a system he was creating as the Ohio Department prepared to begin holding charter schools more accountable. Hansen had also bragged in his federal grant application that Ohio had already begun more aggressively regulating charters. After the U.S. Department of Education awarded Ohio the $71 million grant at the end of September 2015, however, it was pointed out that the Ohio legislature had not yet passed the regulations for which Hansen (in July) had given the state credit. (The Ohio Legislature later adopted the most basic and minimal charter school oversight when it passed Ohio House Bill 2 on October 7, 2015).
When Ohio Senator Brown wrote to U.S. Secretary John King in June, 2016, the $71 million Ohio grant had been put on hold for months, as the U.S. Department of Education investigated Ohio’s dealings with charter schools. In his June 20 letter, Senator Brown wrote:
“In your November 2015 response letter to the members of the Ohio Congressional delegation, you outlined a number of steps ED has taken and will continue to take to verify the accuracy and completeness of ODE’s grant application. I appreciate these steps, but more must be done to provide order to the state’s chaotic charter school sector. In light of this report, I ask that you examine the performance of Ohio charter schools who have received CSP (federal Charter Schools Program) grants to determine whether grant recipients are failing or closing at a higher rate than those in other states and how the academic performance of CSP grant recipients in Ohio compares to CSP grant recipients nationwide. I further ask that when Ohio has satisfied all necessary conditions for this grant money to be released that you appoint a special monitor to review every expenditure made pursuant to this grant in order to ensure that all funds are being spent for their intended purpose. Ohio’s current lack of oversight wastes taxpayer’s money and undermines the ostensible goal of charters: providing more high-quality educational opportunities for children. There exists a pattern of waste, fraud, and abuse that is far too common and requires extra scrutiny.”
Last Wednesday, September 14, 2016, the U.S. Department of Education finally released the $71 million grant, but, as Patrick O’Donnell reports for the Plain Dealer, there are now many conditions:
“In a letter to the Ohio Department of Education today, the grant was declared ‘high risk’ because of the poor academic performance of the state’s charters and the struggles the state has had in implementing portions of House Bill 2, the state’s charter reform bill passed last fall by the state legislature… The letter states: ‘As part of this high-risk designation, we are imposing certain High-Risk Special Conditions on ODE’s CSP (Charter Schools Program) SEA (State Education Agency) grant that will help ODE and the Department more clearly determine ODE’s ongoing compliance with applicable requirements’ so that it will be more transparent and so that any issues can be identified and fixed quickly.”
Here are the conditions as reported by O’Donnell:
“(T)he state cannot give out grants to schools as it has in the past. It must have prior approval from the U.S. Department of Education before transferring any money.
“The department must evaluate dropout recovery schools better.
“The state must report its progress four times each year.
“ODE must hire an independent monitor of the grant program.
“The state must create a Grant Implementation Advisory Committee.
“And it must do demanding ratings of the oversight agencies known as ‘sponsors’ in Ohio, but as ‘authorizers’ in most other states.”
Ohio’s problems with the controversial $71 million Charter Schools Program grant are not the first time anyone has noticed the federal Department of Education’s failure to oversee the Charter Schools Program. A year ago in June, 2015, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools—a coalition of national organizations including the American Federation of Teachers, Alliance for Educational Justice, Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, Center for Popular Democracy, Gamaliel, Journey for Justice Alliance, National Education Association, National Opportunity to Learn Campaign, and Service Employees International Union—sent a letter to then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan complaining that while the Department had granted $1.7 billion to states for expansion of charter schools since 2009, the Department of Education’s own Inspector General had been raising alarms about the Department’s own lack of any kind of quality control.
The Alliance’s letter to Arne Duncan cited formal audits from 2010 and 2012 in which the Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG), “raised concerns about transparency and competency in the administration of the federal Charter Schools Program.” The OIG’s 2012 audit, the members of the Alliance explain, discovered that the Department of Education’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, which administers the Charter Schools Program, and the State Education Agencies, which disburse the majority of the federal funds, are ill equipped to keep adequate records or put in place even minimal oversight. The State Education Agencies that lack capacity to manage the programs are the 50 state departments of education.
In the June 2015 letter to Arne Duncan, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools enumerates the problems discovered by the Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General: that the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) did not maintain records of the charter schools funded through grants to states, that OII “lacked internal controls and adequate training in fiscal and program monitoring,” that none of the three states selected as samples for investigation by the Office of Inspector General—Arizona, California, and Florida—sufficiently monitored the charter schools funded through the Department of Education’s State Education Agency grants, that 26 charter schools in these three states were shown by the Office of Inspector General to have closed after being awarded $7 million, and that even when the schools closed, nobody tracked “what happened to assets that had been purchased with federal funds.”
Thank you, Senator Sherrod Brown for doggedly demanding that the U.S. Department of Education improve oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program. Please keep on keeping on.
By Jan Resseger
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Congressional Briefing Coming on the ‘Walmart Economy’
24/7 Wall ST - November 27, 2014, by Paul Ausick - U.S....
24/7 Wall ST - November 27, 2014, by Paul Ausick - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Congressman George Miller (D-CA) are scheduled to appear as speakers at a congressional briefing on Tuesday, November 18, to discuss a business model that some are calling the “Walmart Economy.”
The term refers to a business model “where a few profit significantly on the backs of the working poor and a diminishing middle class.”
Also appearing at the hearing are employees of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) who are members of the OUR Walmart group, as well as Carol Joyner, Director of the Labor Project for Working Families; Amy Traub of research firm Demos; and Carrie Gleason, an organizer at The Center for Popular Democracy.
According to a press release from OUR Walmart, “The briefing will highlight Walmart’s low pay, manipulation of scheduling and illegal threats to workers who are standing up for Walmart to publicly commit to $15 an hour and full-time, consistent hours.”
Senator Warren was recently named to the Democratic leadership team that will be put in place next January. She becomes the strategic policy adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, a newly created position that the Democratic leadership probably thinks will serve as a bridge to the more liberal elements of the party. She was the driving force behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau following the financial crisis and has been a thorn in the side of the big banks ever since.
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Coalition Calls for Fed Focus on Full Employment, Higher Wages
The Dallas Morning News - March 4, 2015, by Sheryl Jean - A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling...
The Dallas Morning News - March 4, 2015, by Sheryl Jean - A coalition of community and labor groups in Texas is calling for the Federal Reserve to focus on full employment and higher wages for blacks and others in poor neighborhoods who have been left behind in the economic recovery.
The group also wants the board of the Fed’s regional bank in Dallas to keep that in mind as it searches for a replacement for Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher, who will retire March 19.
Liberal activists across the country on Thursday plan to protest outside seven Fed regional banks, including New York, Philadelphia and St. Louis, to highlight high unemployment among minority groups and to urge officials not to raise interest rates yet and instead focus on full employment and higher wages. A demonstration also was planned at the Dallas Fed’s office on the edge of downtown, but was canceled due to a forecast for bad weather.
Still, activists in Dallas plan to call attention to a new report showing that the nation’s economic recovery hasn’t reached many minority communities. Falling jobless rates maskhigh black and long-term unemployment and racial inequality in wages in Texas and across the country.
The 84-page report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute shows that Texas’ average jobless rate was 5 percent in 2014, but it was 9.5 percent for blacks. In the Dallas metro area, the average rate was 5.1 percent last year, but it was 9.6 percent for blacks. Nationally, the black jobless rate was 10.3 percent, compared with a national average of 6.2 percent.
Wages also lagged. Texas’ median wage grew 3.9 percent from 2000 to 2014, but it rose 8 percent for whites and declined 0.8 percent for blacks, according to the report. Nationally, wages have been stagnant for most workers since 2000.
“If the Fed raises [interest] rates to banks, then our rates go up, but wages aren’t going up,” said Danny Cendejas, senior organizer in Dallas for the Texas Organizing Project, one of the groups in the coalition. “It’s something that is very concerning for most of our community. In the black and brown communities, where we know the unemployment rates are higher, how do we expect those people to pay their loans back?”
The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since 2008 to help spur business lending to create jobs and boost the economy.
Coalition members in Texas want a more open search process for Fisher’s replacement with more involvement by the community. Fisher, who was in El Paso on Wednesday, has been one of the most vocal advocates of raising interest rates sooner than later.
“Look around at all the construction cranes in Dallas,” said Becky Moeller, president of the Texas AFL-CIO. “I think the lower interest rates are spurring businesses to do work and then they’re hiring people. We just don’t want an interest rate policy that isn’t good for workers in the state.”
Moeller was among a group of 10 community leaders who met with three Fed representatives — general counsel John Buchanan; Alfreda Norman, head of community development and public affairs; and spokesman James Hoard — for about 90 minutes in January to discuss the search process for a new president, the timeline and the qualifications sought.
“We had a good conversation and thought we answered their questions,” Hoard said. The Dallas Fed put the name of the search firm and its email address on its website for anyone interested in nominating a candidate, he added.
Moeller has a different view of the meeting.
“We don’t have a candidate, but we felt like we had some input we wanted to share,” she said. “We don’t want it to be someone who wouldn’t be good for jobs in the future. We wanted to make sure they were looking at the economic factors that relate to real people in Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico. We have low-wage workers who can’t get their head above water. We have folks who are long-term unemployed.”
In addition to the Texas AFL-CIO, the groups that met with the Dallas Fed were the American Federation of Teachers, Communication Workers of America, Dallas Central Labor Council, Fort Worth Building Trades and Ironworkers, Harris County Central Labor Council, Jobs With Justice, Texas Organizing Project and Workers Defense Project.
Coalition members last summer protested the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., forum and met with Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen in November.
Yellen and three other Fed officials met with about 30 workers and activists, including some from Texas, for an hour to hear their plights of being long-term unemployed and struggling to make a living. As a result, the Fed created the Community Advisory Council in January to provide different perspectives on the economy, especially the needs of low- to moderate-income families.
“She listened very carefully and was very engaged and was grateful to us for requesting the meeting,” said Ady Barkan, staff lawyer for the Center for Popular Democracy, who was at the meeting. “It’s the kind of response we would like to see from others.”
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Rockefeller Institute Hands over Final Scaffold Law Report Draft
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a...
Times Union - September 3, 2014, by Casey Seiler - SUNY’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government has released a second draft of its controversial report on New York’s Scaffold Law. According to the Institute’s Deputy Director for Operations Robert Bullock, it’s the last draft version of the report that was shared with the report’s funder, the state Lawsuit Reform Alliance.
The business-backed group, which opposes Scaffold Law, paid $82,800 to fund the report — sponsorship that has led critics to attack the study as advocacy in the guise of research. Its authors, however, insist the research was conducted in good faith.
Scaffold Law, which places “absolute liability” on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs. Opponents would like to see New York follow other states by adopting a “comparative negligence” standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their actions contribute to an accident.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a labor-backed group that supports Scaffold Law, requested copies of all communications between the Institute and the Lawsuit Reform Alliance. That FOIL request produced a series of emails between researchers and LRA Executive Director Tom Stebbins, including Stebbins’ suggested edits to a June 25, 2013, draft copy of the report that was not initially released by the Institute.
The Center appealed to SUNY’s FOIL officer, who ultimately decided the June 25 draft — which had been appended to an email to Stebbins — should be released. A comparison of the draft and the final report suggested that some of Stebbins’ suggestions were reflected in the final version. Researchers, however, said any changes were the result of their efforts to sharpen their analysis, and not made due to pressure from the funder.
The newly released draft, dated Aug. 7, 2013, closely resembles the final report — which neither proves nor disproves the Center’s charges that the academics buckled under pressure.
Josie Duffy of the Center for Popular Democracy, however, claims the six-week gap between the first and second drafts suggests that the Institute moved quickly to follow the Alliance’s edits.
“When LRANY wanted changes, the report’s authors dutifully made them right away — inflating the report’s findings and taking out a key section that challenged how onerous the Scaffold Safety Law really is,” Duffy said in a statement, alluding to the second draft’s disposal of a two-page section on the construction of the Champlain Bridge that found little or no impact on the project from Scaffold Law.
“SUNY says it has now disclosed everything it has, but given that LRANY and the authors held weekly conference calls to discuss the report’s progress, we may never know the full extent of their influence over the final version,” Duffy said.
In an email, Bullock said the Institute “has been open and honest about its contacts with funders and its research has been and will continue to be immune from influence. It is unfortunate that a research organization known throughout the nation for the quality and character of its work should have to defend itself from accusations leveled by the Center for Popular Democracy, an organization well known for its partisanship.”
Update: Stebbins sent the following statement:
“Reform opponents are so terrified of the data that they can do nothing but attack the method of three researchers at two top universities. The Scaffold Law costs billions and causes injuries. If the Center for Popular Democracy wants to have a real discussion about how many billions wasted and how many injuries caused by the Scaffold Law, I will have that discussion all day.”
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Maria Gallagher, Ana Maria Archila and the amazing power of everyday people raising their voice
Maria Gallagher, Ana Maria Archila and the amazing power of everyday people raising their voice
Maria Gallagher, a 23-year-old woman from New York, had never told anyone about the time she was sexually assaulted...
Maria Gallagher, a 23-year-old woman from New York, had never told anyone about the time she was sexually assaulted before she blurted it out to a United States senator, Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona, with millions watching on live national television.
Read the full article here.
Activist With ALS Spearheads Campaign To Punish Lawmakers Who Voted For Tax Law
Activist With ALS Spearheads Campaign To Punish Lawmakers Who Voted For Tax Law
The campaign will involve using digital persuasion ads and get-out-the-vote efforts to vote out incumbents who...
The campaign will involve using digital persuasion ads and get-out-the-vote efforts to vote out incumbents who supported the tax law. Barkan and his team are still developing their strategy, but they plan to focus on congressional races in eight districts around the country. They will be campaigning in Arizona, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.
Read the full article here.
Loan market shrugs off prison financing protests
Advocacy groups in New York gathered Wednesday near JP Morgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon’s apartment, calling...
Advocacy groups in New York gathered Wednesday near JP Morgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon’s apartment, calling on the bank to stop lending to private prison and immigration detention companies, according to the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the protest organizers.
Read the full article here.
Jeff Flake lies to a dying man about the impact of his tax bill vote
Jeff Flake lies to a dying man about the impact of his tax bill vote
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) doesn't have the monopoly in telling happy lies about the Republican tax bill in hoping...
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) doesn't have the monopoly in telling happy lies about the Republican tax bill in hoping constituents will let her off the hook. On a flight back to Arizona Thursday evening, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) was politely confronted by fellow Arizonan Ady Barkan, who is also founder of Center for Popular Democracy's Fed Up campaign and was returning home after being arrested protesting the tax vote.
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Denver's rapid charter expansion yields underwhelming results
Denver's rapid charter expansion yields underwhelming results
Dive Brief: Twenty-seven new charter schools have opened in Denver in the last five years with six more set to open...
Dive Brief:
Twenty-seven new charter schools have opened in Denver in the last five years with six more set to open this summer, but critics point to data about underwhelming performance and examples of forced choice that parents don’t want.
An Alternet article reposted by Salon reports some of the charters that have replaced traditional school options practice harsh discipline disproportionately levied against students of color, and opponents argue a small, powerful circle of local leaders have pushed a charter agenda with the support of big money from outside of the city that has bought electoral support.
A report from the Center for Popular Democracy identified 38% of Denver’s charters as performing “significantly below expectations,” and some parents say they’d prefer more funding and support for neighborhood schools over new expenditures on charters.
Dive Insight:
Charter school performance across the country is mixed. There are high-performing charter schools that have impressive student outcomes that proponents can point to as evidence the charter sector should be expanded. At the same time, there are mediocre or low-performing charter schools that critics can point to as saying the sector does nothing more than siphon funding from traditional schools.
While the CPD study found 38% of Denver’s charters to be significantly underperforming, another found six out of eight of the city’s top schools to be charters. A report to the Colorado General Assembly based on data from the 2011-12 school year found similarly mixed results, where charters perform better on some metrics but not on others. Denver is not the only city engaging in this debate, which has become familiar in virtually every major urban area in the country.
By Tara García Mathewson
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A 'striking lack of diversity' at the Fed distorts economic policy in ways most people don’t consider
A 'striking lack of diversity' at the Fed distorts economic policy in ways most people don’t consider
In a new report from the liberal-leaning Fed Up, a coalition of community groups advocating for continued low interest...
In a new report from the liberal-leaning Fed Up, a coalition of community groups advocating for continued low interest rates from the Fed with a view to helping the country's poorer families enjoy some of the benefits of the recovery, the group says a lot of work remains to be done despite recent progress on diversity under Yellen's tenure.
Read the full article here.
7 days ago
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