The Death of California Charter School Reform: Gavin Newsom and the Eight Billionaires - Los Angeles Times

How eight elite San Francisco families funded Gavin Newsom’s political ascent - Los Angeles Times

How eight elite San Francisco families funded Gavin Newsom’s political ascent

Gavin Newsom wasn’t born rich, but he was born connected — and those alliances have paid handsome dividends throughout his career.

A coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families has backed him at every step of his political rise, which in November could lead next to his election as governor of California.

San Francisco society’s “first families” — whose names grace museum galleries, charity ball invitations and hospital wards — settled on Newsom, 50, as their favored candidate two decades ago, said Willie Brown, former state Assembly speaker and former mayor of the city.

“He came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,” said Brown, who is a mentor to Newsom. “They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.”

A Times review of campaign finance records identified eight of San Francisco’s best-known families as being among Newsom’s most loyal and long-term contributors. Among those patrons are the Gettys, the Pritzkers and the Fishers, whose families made their respective fortunes in oil, hotels and fashion. They first backed him when he was a restaurateur and winery owner running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1998, and have continued their support through the governor’s race.

They are not Newsom’s largest donors: The families in total have given about $2 million of the $61 million that donors have contributed to his campaigns and independent committees backing those bids. But they gave while he was a relative unknown, providing crucial support to a political newcomer in the years before his campaign accounts piled high with cash from labor unions, Hollywood honchos, tech billionaires and donors up and down the state.

Newsom’s faithful eight

Guggenhime

Buell

Swig

Marcus

$61.5 million

Wilsey & Traina

Total donations since 1998

Fisher

Getty

$2.2 million

Pritzker

From consistent family donors

Now the families appear poised to see their investments pay off.

These donors are mostly liberal, inspired by Newsom’s history as an early supporter of progressive causes, including same-sex marriage as San Francisco mayor in 2004. But some are Republicans, including President Trump’s new ambassador to Austria, who are drawn by Newsom’s background as a small businessman.

The front-runner’s opponents have attacked him for his connections. During the primary, two of his Democratic rivals, Antonio Villaraigosa and John Chiang, painted Newsom as the beneficiary of wealth and privilege. John Cox, his GOP opponent in the November election, reiterated the theme in a new website titled “Fortunate $on.” And an independent expenditure committee supporting the Republican spent a quarter-million dollars late last month on an ad calling Newsom “a child of privilege, his path greased by family and political connections and billionaire patrons.”

Newsom, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment on this article, has long been tied to San Francisco society.

His father, Bill, was a lifelong friend of Gordon Getty, the son of oil magnate J. Paul Getty — they attended high school together. Bill CONTINUE READING: How eight elite San Francisco families funded Gavin Newsom’s political ascent - Los Angeles Times

Big Education Ape: Gap Co-Founder Doris Fisher Is Bankrolling the Charter School Agenda – And Pouring Dark Money Into CA Politics – Capital & Main - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/09/gap-co-founder-doris-fisher-is.html

Big Education Ape: Doris Fisher: Down the Dark Money Rabbit Hole | Capital & Main #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady #kidsdeserveit #marchforpubliced #WeAreCTA @WeAreCTA - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/12/doris-fisher-down-dark-money-rabbit.html


Big Education Ape: Governor’s team jumps into fray over contested charter school bill | EdSource - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/07/governors-team-jumps-into-fray-over.html


Big Education Ape: Newsom administration seeks CHARTER SCHOOL MONEY in push to reform charter law | EdSource - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/07/newsom-administration-seeks-charter.html

Why MaryEllen Elia, the New York education commissioner, is surprisingly set to resign

Why MaryEllen Elia, the New York education commissioner, is surprisingly set to resign

Why MaryEllen Elia, the New York education commissioner, is surprisingly set to resign

ALBANY - MaryEllen Elia, the New York education commissioner, will resign at the end of August to take a position with a national education group.

Elia, the state's first woman education commissioner, submitted a resignation letter to the Board of Regents on Monday, a move that surprised the board.

"It has been my great pleasure and honor to serve the students and teachers of New York over the last four years as we work to advance equity and excellence in our education system," she wrote in the letter.

Elia, 70, was appointed to the position in 2015 and has overseen an overhaul of the troubled East Ramapo schools in Rockland County and more recently the struggling Rochester City School District.

Born in Rochester, Elia started her career in the Buffalo area, and later went on to head the Florida's Hillsborough County school district in the Tampa area, which was the eighth-largest district in the country.

Elia declined to comment specifically about her new job, saying it will be announced by the group after she leaves the state, but said it will "focus on supporting districts to help turn around schools."

In her resignation letter, Elia highlighted what she viewed as her successes over her career.

"As a former teacher, administrator and superintendent, I have devoted my entire 45-year career to putting children on a path to success both in school and beyond, and I am enormously grateful for the opportunity to lead the school system here in New York state," she wrote.

Elia's record: CONTINUE READING: Why MaryEllen Elia, the New York education commissioner, is surprisingly set to resign

Peter Greene: What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

Max Ventilla launched AltSchool quietly enough in 2013, but within two years it was a hot Silicon Valley startup. In 2015, $100 million of investment dollars from major education reform players like Mark Zuckerberg and the Emerson Collective spurred an impressive wave of press. In just 24 hours the Silicon Valley Wunderschool has been covered by Kevin Carey in the Pacific Standard, Natasha Singer in the New York Times, and Issie Lapowski at WIRED.com. And USA Today and techcrunch and Forbes.

AltSchool would be a proof of concept for the most ideal version of personalized learning, centered on teachers who would be backed up by tech and tech engineers, and backed by, ultimately, about $174 million. Ventilla envisioned a chain of profitable private schools setting a new standard for high-tech personalization. But click over to the AltSchool website today and all you will find is a push for something called Altitude Learning. Ventilla has sold off the schools themselves and created a new venture that will focus on selling the tech software that AltSchool developed. The headlines are not nearly as glowing as they were four years ago. "AltSchool Gives Up On CONTINUE READING: What Can We Learn From An Experimental High Tech Wunderschool Failure?

NYC Public School Parents: NYSED attempts to radically weaken NY Student privacy law to allow for the selling of student data

NYC Public School Parents: NYSED attempts to radically weaken NY Student privacy law to allow for the selling of student data

NYSED attempts to radically weaken NY Student privacy law to allow for the selling of student data

Here and below is a letter that NYSAPE, Class Size Matters and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy sent to the Board of Regents last night.  

The Regents were set to discuss newly revised proposed student privacy regulations this morning which considerably weaken the state's student privacy law passed in 2014, NY Education § 2-d , that was approved by the Legislature as a result of the controversy over inBloom.  At that time, the Legislature blocked the state's plan to hand off a a wealth of personal student information to this Gates-funded corporation and also passed a new law modeled on CA legislation , which wisely prohibited the sale and use of personal student data for marketing purposes under any circumstances.  

Instead, the new proposed regulations  posted here would allow for the sale and use of student data for marketing purposes as long as there was “consent” on the part of parents and/or eligible students, by claiming that it would no longer be defined as marketing.  This radical redefinition of the law was made presumably at the behest of College Board and ACT.  

The College Board, which makes millions of dollars from selling student data while claiming that it does not, was recently exposed by the NY Times as selling the information to third parties which in turn sell it to even more unscrupulous organizations to make money off unsuspecting families.  The College Board harvests much of this data off students deceptively before the administration of the PSATs and SATs, without parent knowledge, a practice that we have written about extensively and more recently has been criticized by the US Department of Education.

There are many other problems with these proposed regulations that would further restrict the ability of parents to keep their children's information safe from abuse, as we had pointed out in our comments on the regulations as originally drafted.

In addition, according to the state law, NYSED Chief Privacy Officer is supposed to produce a report each year on the progress made in protecting student privacy, including the results of investigations of breaches and parental complaints.  And yet NYSED officials have refused to provide any such reports, even after being asked for them. 

Here is the agenda of today’s Regents meeting – the early morning session  were live-streamed but unfortunately not the session starting at 10:30 AM where these regulations will discussed.  

The letter was quickly drafted over the weekend because as it points out, we had no advance warning that these regulations were being released until they appeared on the Regents agenda; apologies if there are some grammatical errors.  More soon.

Tax credit for stay-at-home parents: the new proposal, explained - Vox

Tax credit for stay-at-home parents: the new proposal, explained - Vox

Parenting can be a full-time job. Activists want the tax code to treat it that way.
A “caregiver EITC” would reward parents who stay at home.

About 11 million parents in the US don’t work for a wage. Most of those are stay-at-home moms primarily at home for caregiving reasons, but it’s a group that also includes ill or disabled parents, parents who are retired, and parents still in school.

And for full-time caretakers without a partner who’s working, the US tax code currently doesn’t offer much.

The two big tax benefits for low-income parents — the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit — are both premised on work. The EITC offers massive benefits — up to $5,828 for parents with two qualifying children — but to get the full benefit, parents have to be in a household earning more than $14,570. That limits the benefits going to poor or extremely poor households without a working adult, which have to rely on benefits like food stamps and support from extended family to get by. The Child Tax Credit is even worse, as benefits don’t even start to kick in until a household earns $3,000.

However, a new policy idea, endorsed by a number of Democrats in Congress and pushed by the influential (and deep pocketed) Economic Security Project, would transform the safety net for non-working parents overnight. The idea, known as “caretaker EITC” (and part of a broader proposal formally dubbed the “Cost of Living Refund”), would treat caring for children or vulnerable adults as a job, and entitle caretakers to a full EITC credit for their work.

It’s a move that would likely weaken the incentive for work that the EITC provides, but also provide a fuller safety net for parents. It would create a more even financial playing field CONTINUE READING: Tax credit for stay-at-home parents: the new proposal, explained - Vox

Bill Phillis: Who Is Protecting Imam Gulen? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bill Phillis: Who Is Protecting Imam Gulen? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Bill Phillis: Who Is Protecting Imam Gulen?

Charter schools associated with the Gulen movement are found in many states. They have many different names, like Magnolia, Harmony, Sonoran and more. There are more than 150 of them. If asked, they always deny that they are Gulen schools. The best source for identifying Gulen schools is the list of names compiled by Oakland parent activist Sharon Higgins.

Sharon Higgins

Gulen schools can usually be identified by their unusual number of Turkish teachers and Turkish board members.

Bill Phillis raises a question:  CONTINUE READING:Bill Phillis: Who Is Protecting Imam Gulen? | Diane Ravitch's blog

PA Officials Want to Replace Bad Keystone Exams with Bad College Entrance Exams | gadflyonthewallblog

PA Officials Want to Replace Bad Keystone Exams with Bad College Entrance Exams | gadflyonthewallblog

PA Officials Want to Replace Bad Keystone Exams with Bad College Entrance Exams

Pennsylvania officials are scandalized that the Commonwealth is wasting more than $100 million on unnecessary and unfair Keystone Exams.

They’d rather the state spend slightly less on biased college entrance exams.

State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and State Sen. Andy Dinniman held a joint press conference last week to introduce a new report compiled by DePasquale’s office on the subject which concludes with this recommendation.

Replacing bad with bad will somehow equal good?

Under the proposal, elementary and middle school students would still take the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests. However, instead of requiring all high school students to take the Keystone Exams in Algebra I, Literature and Science, the report proposes the same students be required to take the SAT or ACT test at state expense.

This is certainly an improvement over what the state demands now, but it’s really just replacing one faulty test with another – albeit at about a $1 million annual cost savings to taxpayers.

The report does a good job of outlining the fiscal waste, lack of accountability and CONTINUE READING: PA Officials Want to Replace Bad Keystone Exams with Bad College Entrance Exams | gadflyonthewallblog

Jeff Bryant: Why Won’t the Charter Industry Admit Its Failures and Clean House? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant: Why Won’t the Charter Industry Admit Its Failures and Clean House? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant: Why Won’t the Charter Industry Admit Its Failures and Clean House?

Jeff Bryant notes the escalating scandals surrounding the charter industry, creating a stench that can’t be covered up and hidden.

Yet the charter industry refuses to acknowledge its problems and act to correct them and to oust the bad actors from its big tent.

Case in point: when the Network for Public Education released a study of the federal Charter Schools Program which showed that about one-third of all federally-funded charters had never opened or had closed soon after opening, at a cost of taxpayers of $1 billion, the charter industry was at first silent. Then it responded by attacking the report and NPE, claiming that NPE was “union-funded,” which it is not. NPE has indeed received contributions from unions, but the overwhelming bulk of its funding comes as voluntary gifts from individual supporters.

The attack came from paid employees of the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools, whose job seems to be to deny any charter misdeeds and to attack all critics and criticism. They were outraged that NPE would criticize the federal Charter Schools Program, which under Betsy DeVos has directed the bulk of its $440 million a year to support of large corporate chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy. It is now a charter slush fund, controlled by DeVos and her merry band of privatizers.

Bryant, who was a co-author of the NPE report with CONTINUE READING: Jeff Bryant: Why Won’t the Charter Industry Admit Its Failures and Clean House? | Diane Ravitch's blog

AFT Sues Betsy DeVos over Mismanaged, Deceptive Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program | janresseger

AFT Sues Betsy DeVos over Mismanaged, Deceptive Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program | janresseger

AFT Sues Betsy DeVos over Mismanaged, Deceptive Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program

The federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has denied 99 percent of borrowers who—with the expectation their student loans would be forgiven after a decade—have worked for ten years in public service professions.

In May, Politico‘s Kimberly Hefling described  the depth of the problems in the federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness program: “The nation’s student loan forgiveness program for public servants is a disaster, it’s widely agreed. The numbers are mind-boggling. Only about 1 percent of the teachers, nurses, public defenders, military personnel and other public servants applying for student loan relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program are succeeding. That leaves tens of thousands of frustrated borrowers with student loans they thought would be forgiven after they worked a decade on the job… In fall 2017, after the first wave of borrowers hit the 10-year mark of service for eligibility in the program, the chaos started to publicly unfold.”

Hefling reports that the program has been politically divisive since its inception in 2007: “When the program was signed into law in 2007, Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. President George W. Bush threatened to veto the legislation, but ultimately signed it.”

The Washington Post‘s Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports that last Thursday, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) sued Education Secretary DeVos, “alleging gross mismanagement” of the program.

Earlier lawsuits have been filed against the companies with which the U.S. Department of Education contracts to manage the program—Navient, FedLoan Servicing and others. Douglas-Gabriel describes the lawsuit filed last week by the American Federation of Teachers, which, CONTINUE READING: AFT Sues Betsy DeVos over Mismanaged, Deceptive Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program | janresseger

Former TFAer/TFA Exec (shh…) Allison Serafin: From Texas, to Nevada, and Back to Texas | deutsch29

Former TFAer/TFA Exec (shh…) Allison Serafin: From Texas, to Nevada, and Back to Texas | deutsch29

Former TFAer/TFA Exec (shh…) Allison Serafin: From Texas, to Nevada, and Back to Texas

In April 2016, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published an article about former VP of the Nevada State board of Education, Allison Serafin, who resigned from the board in December 2015 because of a conflict of interest involving her decision to apply for state money to partially fund a charter-promoting nonprofit that Serafin started in 2014, Operation 180. In April 2016, Serafin’s nonprofit, Opportunity 180, won a state contract. From thr LV Review-Journal:

The former vice president of the State Board of Education, who resigned last year citing a potential conflict of interest, won a $10 million contract Tuesday to recruit high-quality charter school operators to Nevada.

When she stepped down from the state board in December, Allison Serafin noted her intent to submit a bid for the state’s new charter harbormaster fund, which matches grants from private philanthropic groups to attract the “best-in-class” national charter management organizations.

The contract authorizes Opportunity 180, an educational nonprofit group that Serafin founded in 2014, to drive two key components of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s education reform agenda: expanding access for low-income families to high-performing charter schools and creating a state-run Achievement School District to take over and turn around chronically underperforming campuses. …

As of Friday, Opportunity 180 already had collected more than $4.1 million in committed or cash donations from the Englestad Family Foundation and three other philanthropic groups, Serafin said.

So, Serafin arguably saw an *opportunity* to tailor her nonprofit toward CONTINUE READING: Former TFAer/TFA Exec (shh…) Allison Serafin: From Texas, to Nevada, and Back to Texas | deutsch29