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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Here's How to Make the Fed More Transparent and Accountable
The Federal Reserve has long faced fierce scrutiny from members of Congress, community leaders, and the press for its...
The Federal Reserve has long faced fierce scrutiny from members of Congress, community leaders, and the press for its lack of transparency. Fed Chair Janet Yellen, still early in her term, has signaled an intention to improve transparency and hold the Fed accountable to the public interest, and she’ll face an important test this month as she starts deciding whom to appoint to the newly formed Community Advisory Council.
In the most recent example of Fed’s insular system of governance, Bloomberg Business revealed concerning news about the recent appointment of Patrick Harker as president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve. Harker had served on the bank’s Board of Directors prior to his appointment, and was even on the search committee interviewing candidates for the presidential slot. Then, in a behind-the-scenes maneuver reminiscent of Dick Cheney’s infamous self-selection as George W. Bush’s running mate, Harker became a candidate for the job himself, and was swiftly chosen by his Board colleagues. Harker’s shadowy appointment process was par for the course at the Fed. In Dallas, the presidential appointment process has been downright dynastic: the outgoing president, Richard Fisher, appointed an advisory committee made up of the people who appointed him to help select his successor.
Chair Yellen has an immediate opportunity to reverse course and change the face of the Fed. This year, the Fed announced the creation of a Community Advisory Council, intended to offer Fed leaders “diverse perspectives” on the economy, “with a particular focus on the concerns of low- and moderate-income populations.” Applications for the Community Advisory Council were due last week. The question facing Fed officials is whether they will appoint individuals to the Council who represent low- and moderate-income voices, or whether the Council will be another elite echo chamber (one earlier predecessor to the Council was heavy on members from for-profit lenders like Capital One and Citigroup—hardly organizations representing the interests of working families).
The announcement of the CAC was a direct response to growing demand for greater public representation at the Fed, and it’s not hard to see why. Of the 108 members of the 12 banks’ boards of directors (which select and oversee those 12 presidents), only 15 come from the nonprofit sector, academia, or labor organizations. The other 93 come from corporations or banks, even though the law requires that two-thirds represent a “diverse” set of interests, including those of labor and consumers. Fed officials lack diversity in other ways, too: among governors and presidents, all but one are white, and the vast majority are men.
Fed officials have huge power over the American economy: They vote on crucial monetary policy decisions, determining whether we reach full employment with rising wages for all or whether the economy continues toward stagnation and inequality. As long as Fed bodies are dominated by the financial sector, their decisions will reflect the perspectives of the very entities the Fed is meant to oversee, rather than the working families across the country who need higher wages and more equitable economic growth.
So, who will lead the Fed in the years to come? Next February, the terms of all 12 regional Fed presidents expire. Their respective Boards of Directors will decide whether to reappoint the presidents or replace them. A coalition of community-based organizations, faith leaders, policy advocates, and labor unions are calling for the Federal Reserve to make this process more transparent. At a bare minimum, the banks should publicize the schedule for the decision-making, the names and roles of the decision-makers, the criteria that will govern the process, and the names of candidates under consideration. A more public process would involve the opportunity for members of the public to serve on the search committees, mechanisms for the public to submit questions and receive answers from prospective candidates, and public forums where Fed officials actually engage in dialogue with the people whom they are supposed to represent. Chair Yellen and officials at the Fed have the power to implement such reforms, and their decisions will speak volumes about their commitment to building an independent central bank with democratic legitimacy.
Janet Yellen’s appointment as the first woman to lead the Fed signaled that change might be coming to a historically opaque institution. But to truly transform the Fed, Yellen and her fellow governors must ensure that the voices of working families aren’t drowned out by wealthy financial interests. The first step is ensuring that the new CAC lives up to its mission by including women, people of color, and representatives of organizations with low- and moderate-income members. It could even directly install some low- and moderate-income individuals on the Council. That would indeed bring new perspective to an institution that has, for too long, been dominated by the voices of America’s elite.
Source: The American Prospect
More states question controversial on-call scheduling
Dive Brief: Attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia sent letters to 15 retailers asking them...
Dive Brief:
Attorneys general from eight states and the District of Columbia sent letters to 15 retailers asking them to explain their policies regarding “on-call” scheduling, seeking information and documents related to their use of on-call shifts.
Letters were sent to American Eagle, Aeropostale, Payless, Disney, Coach, PacSun, Forever 21, Vans, Justice Just for Girls, BCBG Maxazria, Tilly’s, Inc., David’s Tea, Zumiez, Uniqlo, and Carter’s, with signatures from any attorney general involved in the state where the retailer has operations.
The coordinated move follows a similar one last year from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office, an effort that prompted six retail brands, including Urban Outfitters, Gap Inc., L. Brands, J. Crew, Pier 1, and Abercrombie & Fitch to end on-call scheduling.
Dive Insight:
Algorithms in software have helped retailers lower costs through efficient staffing, cutting workers loose in slow times, having them wait "on call" in case things get busy, and leaving little room for flexibility. The practice makes it difficult for retail employees to juggle the realities of their those jobs while also trying to manage their households and earn enough money to get by.
“On-call shifts are unfair to workers who must keep the day free, arrange for child care, and give up the chance to get another job or attend a class–often all for nothing,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “On-call shifts are not a business necessity, as we see from the many retailers that no longer use this unjust method of scheduling work hours.”
Schneiderman’s office has been keen on cracking down on the practice for a while now, which in most cases violates his state’s laws, and there’s been rising sentiment among lawmakers in several states—and possibly even in Congress—to pull back on the practice.
But even with this pressure, and despite its dubious legality in some areas, on-call scheduling is still fairly widespread, according to the Fair WorkWeek Initiative.
“Over the past year, workers have been speaking out about the struggles caused by increasingly unpredictable hours,” Fair Workweek Initiative director Carrie Gleason said in an email to Retail Dive. “Workers should not have to choose between living with dignity and getting enough hours to put food on the table. It is heartening to see more and more policymakers and regulators take action to address a crisis affecting millions of Americans.”
Retailers should be prepared to see more such concerns, warnings, and even legislation as just-in time scheduling gets more scrutiny, Gail Gottehrer, a labor & employment litigator at Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider in New York who works on behalf of employers, told Retail Dive last year. The practice was a major concern when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last year unanimously passed its Worker Bill of Rights law.
“This can be especially difficult for multi-state employers,” Gottehrer said. “If you’re in a lot of jurisdictions it can be complicated to get things right.”
Not all the retailers that received letters use the practice. Forever 21 emailed Retail Dive to say, "Contrary to published reports, Forever 21 does not permit on-call scheduling nor do we have a company policy around doing so." On Friday, American Eagle Outfitters also released a press release reiterating that it has banned the practice nationwide. "We decided in November 2015 to cease the use of “on-call shifts” and advised our stores," the company states. "We are taking steps to reinforce and assure adherence to this policy across our store fleet."
Spokespeople for Coach and Payless told Reuters that they don’t use on-call scheduling, and a Zumiez spokesperson told Reuters that it’s cooperating, and a spokesperson for Carter's said that company is reviewing the letter. Other retailers receiving the new letters did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters.
Recommended Reading
Reuters: US regulators probe retailers' on-call scheduling
By Daphne Howland
Source
New York Must Take Action Against Corporate Backers of Hate
New York Must Take Action Against Corporate Backers of Hate
Make the Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy recently exposed President Trump’s corporate “backers of...
Make the Road New York and the Center for Popular Democracy recently exposed President Trump’s corporate “backers of hate,” companies that stand to profit off an agenda so steeped in hate, prejudice, and greed, you would have to be willfully blind not to see it.
Nothing is more dangerous than business as usual when it is conducted in a moral vacuum, and these companies have been more than happy to go along for the ride: Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Blackrock, Boeing, IBM, Uber, and Disney all seem eager to cash in on the Trump agenda.
Read the full article here.
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.”
Source
When It Comes to Jobs, Fed Up With the Fed
The News & Observer - March 5, 2015, by Kevin Rogers - When the monthly jobs numbers come out Friday, many...
The News & Observer - March 5, 2015, by Kevin Rogers - When the monthly jobs numbers come out Friday, many economists will say that the economy is healthy. Some will even say that wages are rising too fast and that steps need to be taken to slow economic growth. But out in the real world, working families and particularly communities of color are being left drastically behind in the recovery.
The disconnect between the rich and the rest of us is only widening, and that is a real problem when the rich are making the decisions for everyone. For higher wages and more robust employment growth, we don’t need to limit ourselves to the usual discussions and the typical solutions. Rather, we should look in a new direction, to the Federal Reserve, for the necessary policy changes that will usher in real growth on Main Street, not just on Wall Street.
Most people don’t pay much attention to what the Fed does and how it does it, but the reality is that the decisions the Fed makes affect us all, every day.
There are two important ways the Federal Reserve can help:
▪ Ensure a monetary policy that delivers genuine full employment and rising wages for all working families. Raising interest rates in 2015 would be a catastrophic mistake. The American economy needs to see significantly more wage growth, not less.
▪ Provide a more transparent and inclusive approach to policymaking and governance. The Fed needs to listen to the voices of working families, not just banks and mega corporations.
Rampant and uneven unemployment can be measured in numbers, but it means that real-life opportunities fall further out of reach for working parents and that doors close on our children. It means that families are feeling the strain, and disenfranchisement is getting worse.
Permitting the economy to speed up significantly offers only upsides. A new report by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Economic Policy Institute finds that until nominal wages are rising by 3.5 to 4 percent, there is no threat that price inflation will meaningfully exceed the Fed’s low 2 percent inflation target. And such wage growth is necessary for workers to begin to reap the benefits of economic growth and to achieve a genuine recovery from the Great Recession.
Indeed, during the past three decades, it was only in the late 1990s, when the Federal Reserve permitted economic growth to speed up and the labor market to tighten, that workers across the economic spectrum, and in communities of color, saw genuine wage improvements.
As was true then, the Fed is not an innocent bystander in our economy, but an active participant. And yet, despite the clear economic disparities among our communities, voices inside the Fed are now saying that the economy is healthy and that the Fed should tamp down growth so that wages stop rising so quickly.
Although the board members that govern the regional Federal Reserve banks are legally required to represent the broad interests of the public, they mostly represent the financial sector or large corporations – they live very different lives from us, and they don’t take our experiences to the boardroom.
The Fed’s decisions are distant from communities that struggle the most in this economy and simply do not reflect the full diversity of the public it is supposed to represent. This explains why board members have produced an economy that works for them. Millions of working families are left with little hope of a better life.
It is no wonder that supporters of higher wages and fuller employment from across the country are turning up the heat on out-of-touch policies and practices coming from the Fed. Regular families should not be shut out the Fed policymaking process. Instead, they should be at the very core of it.
Source
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article12716264.html#storylink...Fed Draws on Academia, Goldman for Recent Appointees
Fed Draws on Academia, Goldman for Recent Appointees
When the Federal Reserve was established, Congress called for its policy makers to have “fair representation of the...
When the Federal Reserve was established, Congress called for its policy makers to have “fair representation of the financial, agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests, and geographical divisions of the country.”
But Fed officials have recently been drawn from just two backgrounds—academics, either at universities or Fed research departments, and alumni of the financial services firmGoldman Sachs & Co.
The announcement Tuesday that Neel Kashkari would become president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis marked the third Goldman Sachs alumnus in a row to be picked to become a Fed bank president. The other two—Dallas’s Robert Steven Kaplan andPhiladelphia’s Patrick Harker —took office earlier this year.
Mr. Kashkari is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and a former Treasury official who ran the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) during the financial crisis. He takes the helm of the Minneapolis Fed Jan. 1, 2016.
Of the 17 Fed officials in office next year—five members of the Board of Governors and 12 regional bank presidents—all but three will have professional backgrounds as academics or with Goldman Sachs. The exceptions will be Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhartand Fed governor Jerome Powell, who worked at other banking institutions, and Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who was primarily a bank supervisor.
“The obvious downside of this is there’s more of a groupthink within the Fed,” said George Selgin, the director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, referring to the shift toward a narrow range of backgrounds at the central bank. “That can be very dangerous if the groupthink is based on ways of thinking about the economy that are not necessarily sound.”
Mr. Kaplan, a former Harvard Business School professor, had worked as a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., leading investment banking activities. Mr. Harker, the former president of the University of Delaware, served as a trustee of Goldman Sachs Trust and its Variable Insurance Trust.
New York Fed President William Dudley also spent most of his career at Goldman, ultimately serving as its chief economist.
Since the central bank’s founding a century ago, the background of Fed officials has undergone a dramatic shift.
In the early days after the Fed began in 1913, the people selected to run the nation’s central bank were primarily small bankers, reflecting that in the early days, the Fed’s key function was providing banking services to a highly fragmented banking industry. The notion of using Fed policies to steer the broader economy had not yet taken hold.
Through the Fed’s first 40 years, the backgrounds of officials grew increasingly diverse. In the late 1940s, for example, Fed officials included Chester Davis, a former agriculture commissioner and grain marketer; Laurence Whittemore, of the Boston and Maine Railroad and H. Gavin Leedy, a private practice attorney.
The central bank’s leadership also contained many functionaries who rose through the ranks as Fed administrators, such as Robert Gilbert, who in his 20s become one of the first 14 employees of the Dallas Fed. He worked as a loan and discount clerk and in the war loan department, before becoming manger of the Dallas Fed’s El Paso branch and eventually the Dallas Fed President.
Such quaint backgrounds were common among officials in the central bank’s early days but were beginning to dwindle by the 1960s. Today Fed officials who rose through the ranks are almost entirely Ph.D. economists who headed the regional banks’ research departments; the lone exception is Ms. George, who worked as a bank supervisor and Kansas City Fed administrator. Ms. George holds an M.B.A.
Gradually backgrounds in industry, law, and other aspects of government or administration fell out of favor.
“Keep in mind, for much of the Fed’s first half, the focus was really on financial stability,” said Sarah Binder, a George Washington University professor who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “There wasn’t a well-worked out body of knowledge about monetary policy.”
As it became apparent that Fed policy held vast sway over the economic fortunes of the country, presidents and regional Fed boards increasingly turned to Ph.D. economists to guide the central bank and to be effective participants during the debates of the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee.
Ms. Binder thinks the narrow range of backgrounds among Fed officials may lead to a central bank that is thin on expertise when it comes to “the responsibilities that are laid on top of the board, in particular, that extend beyond monetary policy.”
The central bank is tasked, for example, with regulating much of the financial system, not only the giant Wall Street banks, but also community banks, insurers and other financial institutions. The Fed retains some responsibilities for consumer protection and community development, is responsible for the nation’s payment systems and continues to operate the discount window and other low-profile back-office banking functions.
Liberal activist groups, led by the Center for Popular Democracy, have pushed for diversity in the appointment of new Fed officials, pressing for representatives of workers and consumers or labor and community leaders. They have had no luck, and with the filling of the Minneapolis Fed presidency and inaction in Congress over two current nominees to the Fed board, there are no looming vacancies for the central bank’s composition to begin a shift.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
MSNBC - The ED Show - Boehner pushes exclusionary school legislation
MSNBC The ED Show - May 9, 2014 - John Boehner pushed the charter school agenda one step further by supporting...
MSNBC The ED Show - May 9, 2014 - John Boehner pushed the charter school agenda one step further by supporting legislation to pour even more funding into the program. Ed Schultz, Ruth Conniff, and St. Rep. Dwight Bullard discuss.
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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.
Should state be allowed to take over chronically failing schools?
Should state be allowed to take over chronically failing schools?
Georgia voters are being asked to approve a new and controversial way to improve public education. The proposal would...
Georgia voters are being asked to approve a new and controversial way to improve public education. The proposal would empower the state to take over chronically failing schools or convert them to charters or even close them.
It’s called Amendment 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot, and it’s called the Opportunity School District in the legislation that authorized it. The Georgia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 133 during this year’s session with the required two-thirds majority in both chambers. The referendum now needs a simple majority from voters to become law.
Then it asks voters this question:
“Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?”
Gov. Nathan Deal’s OSD proposal, based on similar initiatives in Louisiana and Tennessee, would allow Georgia’s governor to appoint an OSD superintendent, separate from the Georgia Department of Education superintendent, who is elected by voters. The OSD superintendent could take over as many as 20 eligible schools each year and control no more than 100 such schools at any time. The OSD superintendent could waive Georgia Board of Education rules, reorganize or fire staff and change school budgets and curriculum. The state also could convert OSD schools to nonprofit or for-profit charter schools or close them if they don’t have full enrollment.
The state would use the College and Career Ready Performance Index to determine which schools are eligible for takeover. Schools that score below 60 on the 100-point CCRPI for three straight years could be included in the OSD. Those schools would stay in the OSD for no less than five years (or, if they are an OSD charter school, for the length of the initial charter’s term) and no more than 10 years before returning to local control. Opportunity Schools could be removed from the OSD whenever they are graded above an F in the state’s accountability system for three straight years.
Muscogee County had 10 of the 141 schools on the state’s original list of chronically failing schools released last year. Georgetown and Rigdon Road elementary schools, however, improved enough with other schools in the state on the 2015 CCRPI to move off the list. That leaves 127 schools in Georgia and these eight in Muscogee on the current list: Baker Middle School and Davis, Dawson, Forrest Road, Fox, Lonnie Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and South Columbus elementary schools.
The case for Yes
OSD proponents cite the number of chronically failing schools as the most obvious reason to try something drastically new. They also note the reduction in the number of chronically failing schools since the threat of state takeover became possible after Senate Bill 133 passed.
Deal says on his proposal’s website, “While Georgia boasts many schools that achieve academic excellence every year, we still have too many schools where students have little hope of attaining the skills they need to succeed in the workforce or in higher education. We have a moral duty to do everything we can to help these children. Failing schools keep the cycle of poverty spinning from one generation to the next. Education provides the only chance for breaking that cycle. When we talk about helping failing schools, we’re talking about rescuing children. I stand firm on the principle that every child can learn, and I stand equally firm in the belief that the status quo isn’t working.”
Alyssa Botts, spokewoman for the pro-Amendment 1 campaign committee Opportunity for All Georgia Students noted, “The graduation rate for students attending failing schools is an abysmal 55.7 percent,” compared to the most recent statewide figure of 78.8 percent in the class of 2015.
“A school that fails to properly educate its students perpetuates cycles of poverty and increases the likelihood of incarceration,” Botts said in an email to the Ledger-Enquirer. “For many students, educational opportunities provide the best chance to break out of these cycles. … Voting ‘yes’ for the Opportunity School District amendment is a vote to ensure that future generations of Georgians will have the best opportunities available. No child in Georgia should be forced by law to attend a failing school.”
The governor-appointed Georgia Board of Education and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce have endorsed the OSD referendum.
Michael O’Sullivan, executive director of the Georgia Campaign for Achievement Now, part of the 50-state CAN nonprofit organization advocating “a high-quality education for all kids, regardless of their address,” has successfully fought a similar political battle, helping to convince voters to approve the 2012 Georgia charter school amendment. And the OSD is the next logical step, he figures.
“What this has done is create a sense of urgency for districts to act,” O’Sullivan said in an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer. “Voters should be asking what’s being done now? What plans are in place to improve our schools? That’s the ultimate goal. How can we ensure that every student in the state has access to quality education? Right now, 68,000 students attend a school that has failed at least three years or more.”
The opposition is based on being “afraid of loss of control,” O’Sullivan said. “… It’s my hope that opponents would be putting as much effort into fixing their schools so they aren’t eligible for the OSD. I can tell you which option will be best for schools.”
O’Sullivan emphasized that state takeover is only one option for intervention in the OSD.
“There is the ability for the state to assist schools that are failing for one year or two years, and then, after three years, there is a multiple intervention model,” he said. “One is a joint governance structure, with the OSD and the local school district working together to turn around the school.”
Addressing concerns that OSD schools would receive less funding, O’Sullivan said, “Whatever amount that would have been dedicated to that school remains in that school.”
Louisiana enacted the Recovery School District in 2003. The RSD comprises 62 autonomous charter schools in Orleans, East Baton Rouge and Caddo parishes with a total enrollment of more than 32,000 students, according to the RSD’s 2015 annual report. The percentage of RSD schools considered to be failing has been reduced from 44 percent in 2011 to 19 percent in 2015, the report says.
According to the RSD’s 2014 annual report, the percentage of students performing at the basic level or above increased 29 percentage points from 2008 to 2014, while the state average increased 9 percentage points.
In New Orleans, 63 percent of the public school students are in the RSD. According to a June 2015 study by Patrick Sims and Vincent Rossmeier of the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University, “the percentage of (New Orleans) students at the basic level or above has increased 15 percentage points over the past six years. That growth has largely come from the RSD, which has improved by 20 percentage points.”
In Tennessee, as of the 2015-16 school, there were 29 schools in the Achievement School District, enacted in 2010 with the goal of moving the state’s bottom 5 percent of school into the top 25 percent of student achievement. The ASD has made progress, according to its July 2015 report.
“Over a three-year period, ASD students have earned double-digit gains in math and science proficiency and have grown faster than their state peers,” the report says.
The ASD reading scores, however, declined along with the state average.
“We know from national research and our own experience that reading growth tends to lag behind other subjects in a school turnaround setting,” Malika Anderson, then the ASD deputy superintendent and now its superintendent, says in the report.
The case for No
Georgia Federation of Teachers president Verdaillia Turner, a retired Atlanta educator, has seen the statistics that indicate state takeovers improved student achievement, but her organization touts evidence that argues otherwise.
The federation says in its campaign literature that the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit against the state-created school district in New Orleans on behalf of 4,500 students for denying appropriate services. A July 2015 SPLC fact sheet notes that, while an average of 19.4 percent of students with disabilities graduated high school in Louisiana, only 6.8 percent of them graduated in the Recovery School District.
A February 2016 report titled “State Takeovers of Low-Performing Schools: A Record of Academic Failure, Financial Mismanagement and Student Harm” from the Center for Popular Democracy, a liberal-leaning nonprofit advocacy group, found that state takeovers of schools in Louisiana, Michigan and Tennessee produced:
▪ “Negligible improvement — or even dramatic setbacks — in their educational performance.”
▪ “A breeding ground for fraud and mismanagement at the public’s expense.”
▪ “High turnover and instability” among staff, “creating a disrupted learning environment for children.”
▪ “Harsh disciplinary measures and discriminatory practices” for students of color and those with special needs.
Turner fears too much of the motivation for the OSD proposal is about creating profit opportunities in public schools for private charter school companies.
“The bottom line here is that this is a new business at the public’s expense,” Turner said in an interview with the Ledger-Enquirer. “The only thing public about these schools is our tax dollars.”
The federation notes the OSD may retain 3 percent of state funds for administrative operations, reducing the amount of money available for instruction.
“I love my state, and I respect the office of the governor and all of government,” Turner said. “However, this is still a democracy, and we believe that educators and the public need not be misled by what’s about to happen.”
That includes the OSD superintendent’s authority to “get rid of people at will” at any OSD school, Turner said. “The law says, the last line in Senate Bill 133 says, all laws in conflict with this act are repealed.”
Turner noted the state’s standardized testing system has changed the past five consecutive years. “Therefore, we know it’s not reliable,” she said.
In many chronically failing schools, Turner said, “children end up going to jail. But in many of these same schools, children go to Yale. So we need to have a real conversation about what makes schools work.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that a political group called the Committee to Keep Georgia Schools Local has a TV ad campaign opposing the OSD referendum. The group includes the Georgia Association of Educators, Georgia AFL-CIO, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, Georgia Stand-Up, the Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Public Education Matters, Southern Education Foundation, Working America, Pro Georgia, Better Georgia, Georgia Federation of Teachers and Concerned Black Clergy of Metro Atlanta, according to the AJC.
The Georgia School Boards Association’s board of directors voted to oppose the amendment. School boards representing the counties of Bibb, Chatham, Cherokee, Clayton, Fayette, Henry, Richmond and Troup have expressed opposition.
The Muscogee County School Board was scheduled to join them last month, but the proposed resolution was deleted from the agenda between the Sept. 12 work session and the Sept. 20 meeting. Neither superintendent David Lewis nor board chairman Rob Varner has responded to the Ledger-Enquirer’s requests for an explanation.
Responding on their behalf, MCSD communications director Valerie Fuller also didn’t explain the sudden change in thinking, who proposed the resolution, who rescinded it and why. Here is her statement in an email to the Ledger-Enquirer:
“The Muscogee County School District is a public school system, which is supported by taxpayer money. All of our stakeholders (taxpayers, students, parents, teachers administrators and staff) have different opinions on this proposal. Although we believe, and the results indicate, that we are making progress with our challenged schools, to take a side could anger supporters, who might say the BOE is opposed to helping ‘failing’ schools.
“We don’t think it would be wise for a publicly elected body to pass a resolution in opposition of this amendment that might result in controversy, causing unnecessary distractions from the work being done on behalf of these schools. Because this could result in a change to Georgia’s Constitution, we do believe it is important for voters to read and be fully informed about the amendment and its implications.”
In a letter Tuesday to school district superintendents and Regional Education Service Agency directors, Georgia Department of Education deputy superintendent for external affairs and policy Garry McGiboney reminded public school officials that the Georgia Office of the Attorney General advised the GaDOE in 2012, “Local school boards do not have the legal authority to expend funds or other resources to advocate or oppose the ratification of a constitutional amendment by the voters.”
Regardless of whether the proposed OSD is good for Georgia, the referendum’s wording doesn’t accurately explain it, some folks insist. The Georgia PTA called it “deceptive.”
“If the governor and state legislators believe the best way to fix struggling schools is to put them under state control and either close them or turn them over to charter schools, then let the language on the ballot reflect this initiative,” Georgia PTA president Lisa-Marie Haygood said in a news release. “As it stands, the preamble, and indeed, the entire amendment question, is intentionally misleading and disguises the true intentions of the OSD legislation.”
To that end, a class-action lawsuit was filed Sept. 27 against the governor, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The three lead plaintiffs, all from metro Atlanta — parent Kimberly Brooks, First Iconium Baptist Church senior pastor Timothy McDonald III and Coweta County teacher Melissa Ladd — allege in the complaint that the wording is “so misleading and deceptive that it violates the due process and voting rights of all Georgia voters.”
Gerry Weber, an Atlanta lawyer representing the three lead plaintiffs, told the Ledger-Enquirer in an interview the Georgia Supreme Court ruled about 10 years ago that a challenge to the wording of ballot measures must be decided after the vote because the lawsuit would be moot if the proposal fails.
The Ledger-Enquirer asked Deal spokeswoman Jen Talaber Ryan for the governor’s response to the allegation about the referendum’s wording. Ryan replied in an email, “The opposition didn’t attend the publicly announced constitutional amendment meeting where the language was discussed and approved. Why don’t you ask them why? And the preamble and question say exactly what the OSD will do — provide a lifeline for children forced by law to attend a failing school. The only thing misleading here is the fact that national, outside special interest groups are spending money instead of local groups. After all, their go to line is about ‘local control.’ Hypocritical, don’t you think?”
Keep Georgia Schools Local campaign manager Louis Elrod told the Ledger-Enquirer in an email from media relations manager Michelle Davis, “It’s unbelievable that pro-school takeover advocates would make this charge. They are grasping at straws because they’re desperate and losing this fight.
“They know full well that many members of our bipartisan coalition of parents, teachers and public school advocates actively petitioned for changes to both the amendment and the ballot question at multiple hearings. The even more deceptive preamble language was drafted at a separate meeting in Deal’s office. Janet Kishbaugh of Public Education Matters Georgia says she and other opponents called and searched online daily to find an announcement of this meeting. It was later revealed that the preamble was written in Deal’s office in a meeting attended only by the three men who drafted the words.
“The pro-takeover campaign’s political maneuvering just confirms what we know about their intentions — this amendment is designed to silence parents and strip away local control.”
Do your homework and vote
The Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education has taken a neutral position on the OSD referendum, but the partnership’s president, Steve Dolinger, is advocating this:
“The important thing is Georgia voters do their own homework on this issue and make their decision based on solid research and fact-finding, not emotion,” Dolinger, who was superintendent of Fulton County Schools (1995-2002), said in an email to the Ledger-Enquirer from Bill Maddox, the partnership’s communications director. “Both sides make compelling arguments, but it should always come down to what the voter feels is right for the children of our state.”
BY MARK RICE
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