Without Black Culture There Would Be No American Culture | gadflyonthewallblog

Without Black Culture There Would Be No American Culture | gadflyonthewallblog:

Without Black Culture There Would Be No American Culture

“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us, burying black people out of sight and out of mind while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil – black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations then stealing them, gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit.”

With these words, Jesse Williams absolutely floored the crowd at the BET Awards Sunday night.

His acceptance speech for the Humanitarian Award was jaw dropping.

Here was a black actor on “Grey’s Anatomy” just telling it like it is on national TV.

He wasn’t afraid a business dominated by white people would take offense (and some white people did). Or if he was, he wasn’t going to let it stop him.

The activist who recently produced a documentary “Stay Woke: the Black Lives Matter Movement” said, “The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander… If you have a critique for the resistance… then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression.”

No more tone policing. No white fragility. Just if you’re with us, stand up – otherwise, sit down and shut up.

It was beautiful. And it got me thinking.

There are so many obvious truths about our country’s relationship with race that Without Black Culture There Would Be No American Culture | gadflyonthewallblog:

Activists Challenge Plan for NAEP to Assess Student "Mindsets" | Truth in American Education

Activists Challenge Plan for NAEP to Assess Student "Mindsets" | Truth in American Education:

Activists Challenge Plan for NAEP to Assess Student “Mindsets”

The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) that governs the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has announced it will expand beyond assessing students’ academic content knowledge to also include subjective, non-cognitive, socioemotional parameters. Such factors will include “grit,” “desire for learning,” and “school climate.”Assessing “mindsets” of students potentially will allow the government to determine and possibly reshape children’s moral and religious beliefs about controversial social issues.

American Principles Project, Eagle Forum and Education Liberty Watch along with five additional national organizations, as well as, 69 state organizations in 29 states have joined Liberty Counsel to object what they see as illegal changes to the NAEP. (Disclosure: This author is among those who have joined Liberty Counsel.)

As Liberty Counsel demonstrates in its letter to three congressional committees, if these factors are assessed as part of the NAEP test itself, their inclusion violates federal law prohibiting assessment of “personal or family beliefs and attitudes” via 20 USC section 9622. If they are instead part of the background survey given to students, their inclusion violates the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, 20 USC section 1232(h), which requires that such material be made available for parental inspection before administration.

Liberty Counsel attorney Richard Mast, author of the letter, wrote in part:

The NAEP is poised to violate federal law by collecting extremely sensitive 

Activists Challenge Plan for NAEP to Assess Student "Mindsets" | Truth in American Education:

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles | deutsch29

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles | deutsch29:

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Times reports that Green Dot charter schools founder Steve Barr plans to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2017.

The Times considers Barr a long shot– unless current Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti lands a position with Hillary Clinton (assuming Clinton is elected president in 2016).

Barr is a greaseball. I wrote about him in my first book, Chronicle of Echoes, for his assisting Ben Austin in launching Parent Revolution, the astroturf group that manufactures faux-grass roots discontent enabling so-called parent takeover of schools so that said schools might be turned over to charter operation.

Barr also was supposed to manage and renovate a New Orleans school, McDonogh Senior High, and after two years of doing nothing, Barr bailed on the project. No big deal to him, of course, since New Orleans is 1,900 miles from Los Angeles, and any bad press from bailing on a New Orleans school did not touch is Los Angeles-based life.

Below are both my Barr excerpt from Chronicle of Echoes as well as a brief recap of Barr’s shafting the McDonogh Senior High community by bailing on his long-distance commitment to New Orleans.

From Chronicle of Echoes (pages 328-329). (For end note references, see the excerpt as published in the book):

Although promoted to be adopted as ALEC model legislation, the parent trigger originated in California with a group called the Los Angeles Parents Union, whose web address is parentrevolution.com, and whose leader is Ben Austin.  Austin was already in the privatization business associated with Green Dot Charter Schools. In January 2010, the parent trigger barely passed the California legislature (by one vote in each branch) in an effort to garner Race to the Top money. However, the positioning of the Los Angeles Parent Union/Parent Revolution was happening in the years prior to passage of California’s parent trigger legislation.

Before being connected with PR, Austin was associated with Green Dot charters. Indeed, via Green Dot, Austin takes credit for “transforming” Locke High School, “the worst school in Los Angeles into a college preparatory model of reform.” In 2006, Eli Broad announced that he would invest $10.5 million in Steve Barr’s Green Dot Education Project. Sadly, Locke High School became a casuatly to Barr’s amply-funded “experiment.” Austin was able to benefit from Locke’s undoing. In 2007, Austin was paid $95,000 by Green Dot for “consulting” If a “model of reform” involves dividing a school into several smaller schools, closing and reopening these smaller schools multiple times, and finally putting some but not all back together into one school again, all inside of five years, the yes, Locke is a “model of reform.” Teacher and 

Steve Barr– Who Ditched His New Orleans School Renovation Commitment– Wants to Become Mayor of Los Angeles | deutsch29:

 

"We are Oaxaca" - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

"We are Oaxaca"

Seattle - The Washington Badass Teachers Association (WA-BATS) strongly condemns the serious acts of repression by the Mexican government in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, which has massacred 12 people and injured several dozens more members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE). CNTE members were protesting the education reform of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

In 2013, Peña Nieto introduced an education reform as part of a set of 11 neoliberal reforms.

“The controversial law imposes teacher evaluations in order to determine which applicants will be chosen to fill open posts in the public school system nationwide. Critics say the testing only justifies mass layoffs and does not effectively measure teaching skills, like the special knowledge and demeanor needed to teach in rural areas and Indigenous communities.” (teleSUR, 2016)

This is not the first time the Mexican government under Peña Nieto has silenced the voices of educators through executions and violence. On September 26, 2014 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa Normal School were attacked by the government of Iguala, Guerrero. There they killed 43 student teachers and until this day their families have not received justice nor have they been able to provide them with a proper burial as the bodies were never found.

We refuse to continue to do nothing as our educator sisters and brothers are executed a border away.

WA-BATS are calling for action by condemnation in solidarity with Washington Education Association and the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, all other unions, the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Kerry, Secretary of Education King, the U.S. Department of Education, President Obama, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

We stand in solidarity with CNTE in their demands for an end to violence, an open ongoing dialogue, Governor Cue’s immediate departure from office, the resignation and/or impeachments of Peña Nieto, Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong and Education Secretary Aurelio Nuno and for the intervention of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

We are Oaxaca, we are Ayotzinapa. Todos Somos Oaxaca, Todos Somos Ayotzinapa.

#TodosSomosOaxaca #TodosSomosAyotzinapa #Solidarity #AquiSeRespiraLucha #EstoyHartoDeEPN #CNTE

Badass Teachers Association:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Future of Ed Reform

Seattle Schools Community Forum: The Future of Ed Reform:

 The Future of Ed Reform

 I actually had not meant to sit down and write this one but I had so many articles piling up on this subject, it seemed the right time.  


To be clear (as I am certain that 99% of adults in the U.S. would agree), all is not well with public education.  There are many reasons for that.  Now, if you just looked at white and many Asian students, the U.S. is doing as well as most top-level countries.

But the U.S. is a very heterogeneous country that tests all public school students.   We are also a country that seemingly is accepting that nearly 25% of our children live in poverty.  Anyone who thinks that a good teacher is going to overcome institutional racism, poverty and inconsistent/low funding is wrong. 

Also, when I speak of education reform in the U.S., I mean corporate ed reform.  I'm not saying change isn't needed; I'm saying what is being pushed is not really working and, at the end of the day, seems to be serving to allow some people to make high salaries and some companies to make a lot of money. 

I keep up with Education Next which is leans right but usually has some pretty solid thinking.  One of their contributors is Michael Petrilli who I generally don't agree with but again, offers more than happy talk.

In April, he wrote this piece, Policy change is not the only path to school reform.

It strikes me, and several others with whom I’ve spoken in recent months, that education reform is at a turning point. It’s not just the new federal law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which sends key decisions back to the states. It’s bigger than that—a sense of exhaustion with policy as the primary driver of educational change.

He goes on to say the ed reformers still need to fight for "teacher accountability" and expanding "high-quality charter schools" and other "parental choice" (see vouchers) et al.

He quotes Rick Hess, another conservative public education write, who also is 

Susan Ohanian: Schools Matter: Amazon About to Launch New Enterprise in the Education Industrial Complex

Schools Matter: Amazon About to Launch New Enterprise in the Education Industrial Complex:

Amazon About to Launch New Enterprise in the Education Industrial Complex

In Amazon Unveils Online Education Service for Teachers Natasha Singer, a business reporter for the New York Timescovering education technology, describes Amazon's new enterprise, Amazon Inspire. In late August or early September, Amazon plans to  "introduce an online marketplace with tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and other instructional materials for teachers."

           Called Amazon Inspire, the education site has features that may seem familiar to frequent Amazon shoppers.
           Search bar at the top of the page? Check. User reviews? Check. Star ratings for each product? Check.

Singer notes that the educational materials market is where the money is. Analysts predict that, over time, it will  be much more valuable than the school computer market.  The New York City Department of Education is already paying Amazon $30 million to provide e-books to its 1.1 million students. But at least with e-books produced by major publishers, someone has vetted the manuscript. Amazon is  asking  "innovative teachers" to sign up right now for its mahem: "Be a pioneer and help build the future of open educational resources." You can fill out a form and Amazon will let you know if you qualify:

       Complete the form below and we’ll send you a special code if you qualify (we’ll also notify you when we are open
       to schools everywhere). Once your account is set up, we just ask for just 10 minutes of your time to upload and share
       5-10 of your own resources to Amazon Inspire. We also encourage you to rate and review the resources you discover
       there.

Amazon also invites 


      Are you a state, district, or school? An OER provider or a publisher with free content to share? We’ve collaborated
      with thousands of teachers and dozens of states, districts, and publishers during the private beta of Amazon Inspire.
      Now it's your turn. Help us to provide teachers everywhere with access to a large and diverse selection of free digitalSchools Matter: Amazon About to Launch New Enterprise in the Education Industrial Complex:

Jersey Jazzman: The Illogic and Cruelty of Christie's "Fairness Formula"

Jersey Jazzman: The Illogic and Cruelty of Christie's "Fairness Formula":

The Illogic and Cruelty of Christie's "Fairness Formula"

I'm working on an analysis of the "Fairness Formula" -- Chris Christie's regressive school funding scheme -- and will have it ready shortly. Until then, read my piece at NJ Spotlight on this awful plan.

And, for now, let me add this:

Christie's plan is not only divisive, destructive and, yes, racist -- it is also wholly illogical, for at least two reasons:

1) The plan will inevitably drain money from Christie's beloved charter schools, which rely on "pass-through" funding from the less-affluent local districts Christie is planning to screw over.

NJ charter schools get their funds from local districts, which pass on the state aid and local tax revenue they collect based on the number of students a charter enrolls, and whether those students are at-risk (qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a proxy measure of economic disadvantage), are Limited English Proficient, or have a special-education need.

You'll often hear the NJ charter industry complain they don't get as much money per pupil as the public district schools. While it's true the law says they get 90 percent of the budgeted amount per pupil compared to the districts*, and while adjustment aid plays a role in some districts, the main reason for the disparity is that charters, on average, enroll fewer at-risk, LEP, and special education students compared to their host districts. The state's law says districts -- and charters -- get more money for these students, a policy based on reams of research. If you don't enroll them, you don't get the funds. It's that simple.

These charters are disproportionately concentrated in the districts that will suffer most under the "Fairness Formula": the "A" and "B" districts as designated by the state's District Factor Group (DFG) classification system. Which means that even though they enroll fewer at-risk students proportionally compared to their hosts, they still enroll many more than the 'burbs.

And that means the charters will also suffer under the "Fairness Formula," even with their Jersey Jazzman: The Illogic and Cruelty of Christie's "Fairness Formula":

62 Years after the Brown Decision | The Merrow Report

62 Years after the Brown Decision | The Merrow Report:

62 Years after the Brown Decision

As New York City’s public schools close their doors for the summer, it’s worth noting that they are now more segregated than ever.  Sadly, that’s true of public schools just about everywhere, 62 years after the Supreme Court declared state-sponsored school segregation to be unconstitutional in 1954.

Some questions we ought to ponder this summer: What will it take to bring about fairness, let alone integration, in our public schools?  What sort of courage and commitment will be required?  What price are we paying when we accept a divided society, separated by class and race?  Are we committed to racial equality and equal educational opportunity, or are those concepts we pay lip service to, and nothing more?

The men and women who sued to end school segregation in the 1950’s paid a price. It took courage to challenge a practice that had been blessed by the United States Supreme Court, one that was written into state laws and was zealously adhered to by local traditions and zoning covenants. Here’s one story:

Harry Briggs was a garage attendant, and they fired him. And they fired another man whose name was Stookes after–he was working at a filling station also. After they fired him, he attempted to try to work in his backyard, and so he was working on a car and, not having the proper things to use for the car, he had jacked the car up on a homemade shift, and the car fell on him and killed him. And James Brown was working for a trucking company. I don’t recall the trucking company. They fired him.
And they fired teachers who they thought had signed it. My husband had two sisters working in the district. They were fired. He was fired. And I was fired. And even the parents who signed the petition, they wouldn’t let them have loans to–for their crops the following year. And of course the (white) people stopped buying groceries, some of them, and they’d even go to Sumpter and Columbia and other places to buy groceries, and they would cut off everything that they thought was helping the petitioners.

That’s what Mattie de Laine, the widow of the Reverend Joseph De Laine[1] (who helped bring the lawsuit in Clarendon County, South Carolina), told me when I interviewed her in 1979, 25 years after the historic Brown v Board Supreme Court 62 Years after the Brown Decision | The Merrow Report:

For Detroit’s Children, More School Choice but Not Better Schools - The New York Times

For Detroit’s Children, More School Choice but Not Better Schools - The New York Times:

For Detroit’s Children, More School Choice but Not Better Schools

DETROIT — On the face of it, Ana Rivera could have had almost any choice when it came to educating her two sons. For all the abandoned buildings and burned-down houses in her neighborhood in the southwest part of this city, national charter school companies had seen a market and were setting up shop within blocks of each other, making it easier to find a charter school than to buy a carton of milk.

But hers became the story of public education in a city grasping for its comeback: lots of choice, with no good choice.

She enrolled her older son, Damian, at the charter school across from her house, where she could watch him walk into the building. He got all A’s and said he wanted to be an engineer. But the summer before seventh grade, he found himself in the back of a classroom at a science program at theUniversity of Michigan, struggling to keep up with students from Detroit Public Schools, known as the worst urban district in the nation. They knew the human body is made up of many cells; he had never learned that.

When his school stopped assigning homework, Ms. Rivera tried enrolling Damian at other charters, but the deadlines were past, the applications onerous. Finally, she found him a scholarship at a Catholic school, where he struggled to rise above Ds all year. “He doesn’t want to hear the word engineering,” she said.

Michigan leapt at the promise of charter schools 23 years ago, betting big that choice and competition would improve public schools. It got competition, and chaos.

Detroit schools have long been in decline academically and financially. But over the past five years, divisive politics and educational ideology and a scramble for money have combined to produced a public education fiasco that is perhaps unparalleled in the United States.

While the idea was to foster academic competition, the unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles. Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives.

Detroit now has a bigger share of students in charters than any American city except New Orleans, which turned almost all its schools into charters after Hurricane Katrina. But half the charters perform only as well, or worse, than Detroit’s traditional public schools.

“The point was to raise all schools,” said Scott Romney, a lawyer and board member of New Detroit, a civic group formed after the 1967 race riots here. “Instead, we’ve had a total and complete collapse of education in this city.”

The city has emerged almost miraculously fast from the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Downtown Detroit hums with development — a maze of detours around construction sites with luxury apartments, a new Nike store along a stretch of prime but empty storefronts. Even where blight resumes a few blocks out, farm-to-table restaurants and modern design stores sprout hopefully. Last year, the city had its smallest population decline since the 1950s.

But the city’s residents — many of them stranded here after whites and middle-class blacks fled in waves — will not share in any renaissance as long as only 10 percent of For Detroit’s Children, More School Choice but Not Better Schools - The New York Times:

Indian Education in California Still Declining

Indian Education in California Still Declining:

Indian Education in California Still Declining

 The third and final publication of the State of American Indian and Alaska Native Education report series was recently released by the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center (CICSC), providing an assessment of the educational enrollment, retention and graduation rates of American Indian (AI) and Alaska Natives (AN) in California’s public education system.

The 2016 document builds on past reports, released in 2012 and 2014, which document the gaps in education for AI/ANs in California, and the promising practices taking place at California universities to help bridge some of these gaps.

Funded by a generous donation of $500,000 from the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, the report compiles publicly available data to provide information about AI/ANs in the K-12, California State University and University of California systems. The data includes enrollment and graduation rates, dropout rates, number of degrees conferred and number of personnel by race/ethnicity. The information contained in the report is particularly valuable given that California has the largest AI/AN population of any other state in the U.S. and, historically, AI/AN students drop out of high school at higher rates than their peers.

“For American Indian people in particular, the need for education to sustain the milestones and achievements that our tribal ancestors and leaders have worked so hard to build is paramount,” said Joely Proudfit, director of the CICSC. “This report provides a case study for the creation of a 21st century model to recruit, retain, serve and graduate American Indian students from a public university.”

AI/AN High School Graduation Rate in Decline Since 2010

The report indicates that the high school graduation rate for AI/AN students has decreased by nearly 11 percent since 2010, from 3,169 students to 2,830. Although 1.4 percent more students in the 2014 cohort of AI/AN graduates met the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) requirements for college entry, they were still well below their peers: 21.8 percent below White students, 5.5 percent below Hispanic/Latino students and 4.3 percent below African American students.

“The data continues to show that the educational pipeline for AI/AN students is leaking; we are losing our kids along the way,” said Proudfit. “Not only are we graduating fewer AI/AN students, but these students are also lagging behind other groups in terms of college readiness.”

AI/AN Enrollments Rebound at California Community Colleges and Decline at California State Universities

According to the report, there have been declines and slight rebounds in AI/AN enrollments in post-secondary education since 2011.

The enrollment rate for AI/AN at community colleges has increased by 1,037 students in the past four years—a higher pace than both the UC and CSU systems. But while enrollment growth is increasing, data shows that the majority of AI/AN community college students are not continuing on an academic trajectory toward a four-year degree.

The CSU system enrolled more AI/AN First-Time Freshman (FTF) than the UC system eight out of the last 12 years. However, beginning in 2008, the UC AI/AN enrollment of first-time freshman began to increase over the CSU. At that point CSU AI/AN enrollment of FTF declined by 50 percent a year for six years, while UC enrollment increased by 20 percent over the same time period.

The CICSC research team strongly believes that an important factor impacting the data tracking AI/AN FTF and transfer student enrollment has to do with the reporting requirements from the Department of Education in regard to racial/ethnic identification.

“We detail this dilemma in the report,” said Proudfit. “The issue has to do with the way that Hispanic/Latino data rises to the top of reporting requirements or the way that mixed-heritage Indian Education in California Still Declining: 

Guidance for Creating a 'Well-Rounded Education' Under ESSA - Politics K-12 - Education Week

Guidance for Creating a 'Well-Rounded Education' Under ESSA - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Guidance for Creating a 'Well-Rounded Education' Under ESSA

Secretary of Education John B. King Jr., among others, has repeatedly emphasized the opportunities the Every Student Succeeds Act provides states to broaden the definition of success for students and schools. A new report from the Education Commission of the States gives states, districts, and schools a few pointers on how they can consider expanding learning opportunities for students beyond reading and math.

Much of "ESSA's Well-Rounded Education" by Scott D. Jones and Emily Workman focuses on Title IV, Part A of ESSA, known as Student Support and Academic Enrichment, or "the big block grant" as we like to call it, that provides states a versatile pot of federal cash schools can use on a variety of programs from student health to STEM education. Jones and Workman point out that, among other things:

• While districts have more flexibility over how they choose to use the money, those receiving at least $30,000 through the block grant would have to conduct a "needs assessment" every three years to consider how they expand access to a well-rounded education for students.

• Districts also must prioritize schools with the greatest needs, such as those with the largest share of students from low-income households, when distributing block grant cash.

We've written a good bit about the block grant, including how the most recent round of budget negotiations gave the block grant much less money than many members of Congress and many advocacy groups were hoping for. And we've also taken note of how it could impact financial aid low-income students receive to pay for Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate tests. 

And here's one other highlight of the ECS report. ESSA replace the term "core subjects" for key academic study areas with a total of 17 subject areas the law says make up a "well-rounded education." The report lists the nine previous core subjects first introduced in Goals 2000: Educate America Act. Here are the eight new subjects introduced through ESSA as making up a well-rounded education:

The ECS report also lists related impacts found in Title I and Title II in ESSA. The National Education Guidance for Creating a 'Well-Rounded Education' Under ESSA - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

King gets personal on charter school discipline - POLITICO

King gets personal on charter school discipline - POLITICO:

King gets personal on charter school discipline

Big Education Ape: Judge calls evaluation of N.Y. teacher ‘arbitrary’ and ‘capricious’ in case against new U.S. secretary of education - The Washington Post - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/05/judge-calls-evaluation-of-ny-teacher.html

 With help from Caitlin Emma, Kimberly Hefling and Caroline Kelly

KING GETS PERSONAL ON CHARTER SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: Education Secretary John B. King Jr. today will call on the charter school sector to rethink school discipline — something he should’ve done earlier as a charter school administrator, he’ll say. That’s according to prepared remarks for King’s speech before the National Charter Schools Conference in Nashville, Tenn., this afternoon. In 1999, King co-founded [http://politico.pro/1TprSI7] Boston’s Roxbury Preparatory Charter School — a high-performing urban charter school criticized for high suspension rates and its strict “no excuses” approach to discipline. (The school suspended [http://bit.ly/1vu8u4R] nearly 60 percent of its students out-of-school during the 2012-13 school year.) Roxbury Prep became one of the highest-performing middle schools in Massachusetts. King went on to scale the school’s success as managing director of the charter school network, Uncommon Schools. “But today, with the benefit of all we have learned over the last nearly 20 years, the leaders of Uncommon are rightly rethinking discipline,” King will say. “Early on, we had begun to integrate school counseling, mentoring, and support groups, but we did not do it fast enough. We all must commit to accelerate exactly this kind of work.”

Story Continued Below

— Rethinking discipline provides charter schools with an opportunity for “professional reflection and growth,” King will say. And he’ll admit that he had an “internal debate” about raising the issue himself, worried he wouldn’t be able to capture its “complexity.” “What I know from those experiences, and what I’ve learned since, is that discipline is a nuanced and complicated issue,” King will say. “Yet the public discussion of these issues is often binary — pitting one extreme against another. It’s ‘zero tolerance’ or chaos. Authoritarian control or no discipline at all. So, I’ll say up front: I am not here to offer any hard-and-fast rules or directives. But, I believe the goal for all schools should be to create a school culture that motivates students to want to do their best, to support their classmates and to give back to their community, and to communicate in ways big and small to our students and educators that their potential is unlimited.”

— Charter schools have received “a lot of negative attention” when it comes to school discipline, King will say. “Not all of the criticism has been fair or accurate,” he’ll say. “But, as a whole, it is true that charter schools suspend a higher percentage of their students than do district schools. And students of color are more likely to be suspended in charter schools than in district schools.” A study released [http://politico.pro/1VdJB8s] earlier this year by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of Los Angeles, California, found that charter schools suspend black students and students with disabilities at higher rates than other students. But, “it’s not all bad news,” King will say. “The overall suspension rate in charter schools as well as district schools has fallen since the 2011-2012 school year.” Some excerpts from King’s prepared remarks: http://politico.pro/296cjZZ. He’ll deliver the keynote address at 4:30 p.m. ET. Watch live: http://bit.ly/1ROfRy1.

— King’s remarks follow a number of efforts led by the Obama administration to help states, districts and schools nationwide address disparities in school discipline. For example, last year the administration launched a #ReThinkDiscipline campaign [http://1.usa.gov/1gDTBlO] and the Education Department has supported the development of discipline resources for charter schools: http://bit.ly/293dsPV.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/06/king-gets-personal-on-charter-school-discipline-215062#ixzz4Ct4czq2J 
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Teachers Union and Hedge Funds War Over Pension Billions - WSJ

Teachers Union and Hedge Funds War Over Pension Billions - WSJ:

Teachers Union and Hedge Funds War Over Pension Billions

Labor leader aims to pull money from managers who promote retirement cutbacks; a billboard over Times Square

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, sees some proposals by hedge-fund managers to overhaul public schools as an attack on teachers. PHOTO: JESSE NEMEROFSKY/ZUMA PRESS

Daniel Loeb, Paul Singer and dozens of other hedge-fund managers have poured millions of dollars into promoting charter schools in New York City and into groups that want to revamp pension plans for government workers, including teachers.

The leader of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, sees some of the proposals, in particular the pension issue, as an attack on teachers. She also has influence over more than $1 trillion in public-teacher pension plans, many of which traditionally invest in hedge funds.

It is a recipe for a battle for the ages.

Ms. Weingarten started by targeting hedge-fund managers she deemed a threat to teachers and urged unions to yank money from their funds. Then she moved to Wall Street as a whole.

Her union federation is funding a lobbying campaign to eliminate the “carried-interest” tax rate on investment income earned by many money managers. It is trying to defeat legislation that would increase the charitable deduction in New York state for donations to private schools. And it has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing 25 Wall Street firms of violating antitrust law and manipulating Treasury bond prices.

‘Given your strong support...for an organization which is leading the attack on defined benefit (DB) pension funds around the country, I was surprised to learn of your interest in working with public pension plan investors.’

—Randi Weingarten, in March 15, 2013, letter to hedge-fund manager Daniel Loeb

Some pension funds have withdrawn money from hedge-fund managers criticized by the teachers union. And some hedge-fund managers stopped making donations to advocacy groups targeted by Ms. Weingarten.

Hedge funds, reluctant to buckle to the pressure, say Ms. Weingarten is doing a disservice to the teachers she represents, because funds should aim solely to earn the highest possible return on their assets. The personal beliefs or donations of hedge-fund managers, they argue, shouldn’t be a factor in that decision. At least one manager, Mr. Loeb of Third Point LLC, has increased his donations to a charter-school group, citing Ms. Weingarten.

Sander Read, chief executive officer of Lyons Wealth Management, which hasn’t been Teachers Union and Hedge Funds War Over Pension Billions - WSJ:

Activists reveal more dark-money donors to campaigns against unions and schools-funding tax - LA Times #HedgeClippers

Activists reveal more dark-money donors to campaigns against unions and schools-funding tax - LA Times:
Activists reveal more dark-money donors to campaigns against unions and schools-funding tax

 The campaign for extending a schools tax on high-income Californians kicked off this week with the release of undisclosed donors involved in fighting against the levy when it last appeared on the ballot.

The new group, California Hedge Clippers, released the names Tuesday as part of a broader campaign to extend Proposition 30 in the November election. The temporary school-funding tax passed in 2012 and is set to expire at the end of 2018.

The group’s game plan could be called preventive disclosure, or strategic shaming. 

“Dozens and dozens of California’s wealthiest individuals secretly worked to try to make sure this measure would never pass,” said Amy Schur, state campaign director for the L.A.-based group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.

“Proposition 30 is too crucial to risk their interference this time around. We’re calling them out,” added Schur, whose group is part of Hedge Clippers, a coalition of unions and self-described progressive groups.

The group’s reportnames 76 individuals as being revealed for the first time, including Silicon Valley tech and investment executive John H. Scully ($500,000), investor and Hyatt Hotel heir Anthony Pritzker ($100,000), developer Geoff Palmer ($100,000) and private equity investor Gerald Parsky ($50,000).

They and others contributed money to an out-of-state organization, which circulated funds through a series of other groups and eventually back to California, regulators concluded. By then, the identity of the donors was beyond the reach of disclosure laws. 

Still, as the money was channeled to California, some transfers were not properly disclosed and therefore violated the law, officials said. A California investigation resulted in $16 million in fines as well as the disclosure of some major donors, including L.A. billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad ($1 million).

The new names emerged this week from sleuthing based on a partially redacted list of donors that a political operative had provided to regulators. On it, names and addresses of so-called “dark money” donors are partially blacked out. But enough remained in view to allow researchers to cross reference visible information with more complete public filings elsewhere. And, from there, it was a matter of fill-in-the-blanks.

The work is the latest Hedge Clippers report to target the “one-percent,” wealthy Americans with politics they oppose. The Hedge Clippers also are active in New York City and elsewhere.   

Another intriguing name to emerge in the California research was Nils Colin Lind, an executive at Blum Capital, the firm connected to Richard Blum, husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein. The list also includes leaders of the charter school movement, Activists reveal more dark-money donors to campaigns against unions and schools-funding tax - LA Times