CPD IN THE NEWS

Education Week - May 7, 2014, by Katie Ash - An examination of charter schools in 15 charter markets across the United States has exposed nearly $100 million in losses due to fraud, waste, and abuse, says a report from Integrity in Education and the Center for Popular Democracy. 

The report appears to be one of the first shots fired from Integrity in Education, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to expose corporate interests in public education, and is headed up by Sabrina Stevens, a former teacher and American Federation of Teachers staffer. The organization is decidedly anti-charter, likening school choice to "a euphemism for school closures" on its website. 

The report gathered court cases, media investigations, regulatory findings, audits, and other sources from Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania., Texas, and Wisconsin to examine the trends in charter school fraud, waste, and mismanagement. 

It found that there were six main categories of fraud, waste, and abuse:

Charter operators using public funds for their personal gain.

School revenue being used to support other charter operators' businesses.

Charter school mismanagement that fails to create a safe environment for students, such as not providing background checks on staff or not properly supervising students.

Charters requesting public funds for services they do not provide.

Charters inflating their enrollment numbers to boost revenues.

Charter operators mismanaging funds and schools.

After examination, the report found that the most prevalent form of fraud in charters was the first category­—charter operators' using public funds for personal use. 

The report provided several recommendations to help prevent fraud, waste, and abuse from occurring. States should establish an adequately funded office solely dedicated to charter school oversight that has the authority to investigate fraud, waste, and misconduct, the report said. All charters should be independently audited each year, and the schools should be held to the same transparency requirements as regular public schools, the report recommended. 

In addition, the charter school's application, contract, financial information, board members and affiliations, vendor contracts over $25,000, and board-meeting minutes should be made available publicly online, said the report. In addition, relatives of charter school operators should not be allowed to serve on the board, while parents, teachers, and students (in the case of high schools) should be provided representation there, the report recommended. 

The report's appendix includes an extensive list of the different charter fraud, waste, and misconduct cases broken down by state with links to media reports about each one.

 

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As most working Americans could tell you, the economy is still not doing well.

Right now, political pressure to fix this tends to focus on the Federal Reserve. When the Fed hikes interest rates to curb inflation, it also risks squashing job growth. So activists like the Fed Up campaign are pushing Fed officials to lay off their recent interest rate increases. And a bevy of economists just released a letter urging the Fed to target inflation higher than 2 percent.

Read the full article here.

Around this time last year, as another white male took the reins at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Fed’s archaic and opaque system of choosing its regional presidents started to come under fire. At first the criticism was over the way the system appeared to favor insiders. Patrick Harker, at the time the new Philadelphia Fed President, had sat on the regional Fed board that was tasked with filling that position. Later that summer the Dallas Fed would name Robert Kaplan, who is also white, as its president despite the fact that he was a director at the executive search firm that that regional Fed board hired to find candidates. When the Minneapolis Fed named Neel Kashkari its president later in 2015, groups like the Fed Up Coalition pointed out that while he was the only non-white regional president, he, like Harker and Kaplan, had former ties to Goldman Sachs.

Since these presidents have rotating votes on U.S. interest rate policy, many saw the selections as a critical failure to reflect the country’s diversity of gender, race and background. As it stands, 11 of the 12 regional Fed presidents are white, 10 of them are male, and none are black or Latino. Fed Up, a network of community organizations and labor unions calling for changes to the central bank, also points out that there has never been a black regional president in the Fed’s 102-year history.

To be sure, the central bank was set up in 1913 in this decentralized way to check the power of the Washington-based Fed Board, whose seven governors are nominated by the U.S. President and confirmed by the Senate in public hearings and votes. The Fed presidents scattered around the country, meanwhile, are quietly chosen by their regional directors (usually corporate, industry and civic heads) and then, again with little or no public input or transparency, approved by the Fed governors after a series of private interviews with them in Washington. All 12 presidents had their terms extended earlier this year.

So the stage was set on Tuesday for Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who some see as a potential running mate for U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, to make a point about diversity at the Fed while making things rather uncomfortable for Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who was testifying before the Senate Banking Committee – and who, it may be noted, is the first woman to lead the central bank:

Warren: “Does the lack of diversity among the regional Fed Presidents concern you?”

Yellen: “Yes, and I believe it is important to have a diverse group of policymakers who can bring different perspectives to bear. As you know, it’s the responsibility of the regional banks’ Class B and C directors to conduct a search and to identify candidates. The (Fed) Board reviews those candidates and we insist that the search be national and that every attempt be made to identify a diverse pool of candidates…”

Warren: “The Fed Board recently re-appointed each and every one of these presidents without any public debate or any public discussion about it. So the question I have is, if you’re concerned about this diversity issue, why didn’t you take (any) of these opportunities to say, ‘Enough is enough, let’s go back and see if we can find qualified regional Fed presidents who also contribute to the overall diversity of the Fed’s leadership’?”

Yellen: “We did undertake a thorough review of the re-appointments of the performances of the presidents. The Board of Governors has oversight of the reserve banks, there are annual meetings between the Board’s bank affairs committee and the leadership of those banks to review the performance of the presidents, and there were thorough reviews of…”

Warren: “But you’re telling me diversity is important and yet you signed off on all these folks without any public discussion about it. I appreciate your commitment to diversity and I have no doubt about it. I don’t question it. It just shows me that the selection process for regional Fed presidents is broken because the current process has not allowed you and the rest of the Board to address the persistent lack of diversity among the regional Fed presidents. I think that Congress should take a hard look at reforming the regional Fed selection process so that we can all benefit from a Fed leadership that reflects a broader array of both backgrounds and interests.”

As it happens, Clinton said last month that she, too, supports an ongoing push by Warren and other liberal members of Congress to exclude bankers from the regional Fed boards and to make the central bank more diverse.

By Jonathan Spicer

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Working Families Party, Thousands to Protest in NY, DC and Nationwide Rallies Demanding Trump Release His Tax Returns

WASHINGTON - Today, the National Working Families Party announced their participation in the Tax Day March. President Trump’s financial ties to Russia are causing growing questions for both Democrats and Republicans. As a result, thousands of people plan to gather in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, April 15, 2017, at 11 a.m. The Tax March was an idea that started on Twitter, but has gained momentum on and offline, with over 135 marches planned in cities across the country.

Read full article here.