CPD IN THE NEWS

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

On February 3, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the central bank and likely the most qualified nominee ever for the post, will exit the Fed, leaving a legacy described as “near perfection” and with an “A” grade from a majority of economists.

And yet in 2014, the US Senate confirmed Yellen by a vote of 56-26, the lowest number of “yes” votes a confirmed Fed chair has ever received.

Read the full article here.

Also getting under way at the lodge is a protest conference organized by the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal group that has been cajoling the Fed to hold off on raising interest rates. Some researchers, for example, argue that “core inflation” – which strips out food and energy prices and is often used by bankers as their preferred gauge – may be less relevant in a world where futures contracts, global shipping and worldwide trade help even out retail level price swings for some of those goods.

Some analysts have also said that globalization has been a factor in holding down U.S. wages and prices even at times of solid growth.

When the Fed met in June, US oil prices had recovered to over $60 a barrel, and there had been a belief that we’d seen the lows.

Inflation has been a concern for the Fed, as it has been running well below its 2 percent goal and some signs have indicated that it may fall further. London Business School professor Lucrezia Reichlin is the discussant. Yet the theory is still a useful framework to think about monetary policy. This year central bankers, finance ministers, academics and financial market participants will chewing over why inflation is so low, whether this is unsafe and what they can do about it. Investors have cut the probability of a move at that gathering to 28 percent Tuesday from 48 percent on August 18 based on trading in fed funds futures.

They confront a big disparity between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S. and China.

China’s stock market is swooning and its economy slowing.

Goldman Sachs economists wrote Wednesday that they “expect liftoff in December, and see the recent market sell-off as another argument against a hike in September“.

U.S. counterparts will experience both advantages and disadvantages if their currencies behave according to textbooks and their currencies weaken against the dollar if the Fed raises rates.

Dudley said a final decision would reflect how the market acts over the next few weeks, as well as the end-of-montheconomic data.

The absence of Yellen and Draghi has lowered expectations for a major policy announcements at Jackson Hole.

The official roster of attendees at the invitation-only event included Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer and Fed governors Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell, and presidents from eight of the 12 regional Fed banks. “So you look around the world and ask who can take up the slack, and really the answer is nobody”, said Kevin Logan, chief U.S. economist at HSBC Securities, in New York.

The opening session at 10 a.m. Eastern will examine a paper on “Inflation dynamics though firms’ pricing behavior” by Simon Gilchrist, a professor at Boston University and Egon Zakrajsek, an associate director for monetary affairs at the Fed Board of governors.

The vice chairman is considered extra inclined than Yellen to boost charges prior to later, so his statements might make clear how the talk contained in the central financial institution might transpire when officers meet September 16 and 17.

Source: Rapid News Network

CBSNew York - February 11, 2014 - Undocumented immigrants and their supporters are cheering Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for creating city identification cards this year. But, as WCBS 880′s Alex Silverman reported, they also want to make sure New York gets it right.

During his State of the City address Monday, de Blasio vowed to make municipal ID cards available to all residents in 2014 regardless of their immigration status, “so that no daughter or son of our city goes without bank accounts, leases, library cards, simply because they lack identification.”

“To all of my fellow New Yorkers who are undocumented, I say: New York City is your home, too, and we will not force any of our residents to live their lives in the shadows,” he said.

Aracely Cruz said she’s been waiting 10 years to hear a promise like de Blasio’s.

“I face fear every day,” she said. “I don’t trust anybody.”

Cruz was among the immigration reform proponents who gathered at a news conference Tuesday in lower Manhattan. Also in attendance were a mother who wants the freedom to walk into her child’s school and a day laborer who says he has spent 15 years in Queens with nothing to show to prove he’s part of the city.

City Councilman Carlos Menchaca, D-Brooklyn, head of the Immigration Committee, said members are drafting a bill to create the cards and plans to hold a hearing on the matter within the next month.

“We’re not going to wait for a federal government to give us reform,” he said.

“We’re tired of Congress failing us and failing our families,” said Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York. “And what we do in New York is we don’t wait for Congress.”

One concern advocates such as Steve Choi, executive director of the New York City Immigration Coalition, have is “we have to make sure we are ensuring trust, that the city agencies, such as the library and the police, are able to really accept these municipal ID cards without fear that folks are going to be branded somehow.”

Brittny Saunders, a lawyer with the Center for Popular Democracy, said other cities have created an incentive for citizens to also obtain the cards ”by connecting up these IDs with discounts at local businesses.”

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, agreed the ID cards should be used for all New Yorkers, not just undocumented immigrants.

“I, for one, intend to get a municipal ID because I want to use the ID that’s accessible to all New Yorkers,” she said.

Source