The checks are pouring into the charter fight. But who’s signing them - The Boston Globe

The checks are pouring into the charter fight. But who’s signing them - The Boston Globe:

Donors behind charter push keep to the shadows

 A new $2.3 million ad boosting the expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts lists the campaign’s top five donors on screen, in accordance with state law. But the singularly bland names, including Strong Economy for Growth and Education Reform Now Advocacy, give no hint of who is writing the checks.

Four of the five donors to the procharter committee are nonprofit groups that do not, under state law, have to disclose their funders, allowing the individuals backing the effort to remain anonymous.

The cloak of secrecy surrounding the financing of what could be the most expensive ballot campaign in state history has frustrated election officials and underscored the proliferation of untraceable money in political races across the country.

“Would we like to see every donor disclosed? Absolutely,” said Michael J. Sullivan, the director of the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance. “But the statute does not provide for it at this point. This dark money issue is a puzzle that every state is facing right now.”

The ballot campaign known as Question 2 — which would allow for the creation or expansion of up to 12 charter schools per year in low-performing districts — is expected to smash the $15.5 millionthat was spent, mostly by gambling interests, to defeat a 2014 ballot question that would have repealed the state’s casino law.

 View Story

Charter school ballot question divides Democrats

State committee members will discuss the measure when they gather Tuesday night in Lawrence.

•  Boston charter schools want to grow
•  Money at the heart of the charter debate

Earlier this month, charter opponents initiated the air war when they launched an $800,000 adarguing against the expansion of charter schools, which are controversial because they do not have to be unionized, operate independently of local districts, and are given more flexibility to set their curriculums, budgets, and staffing.

That ad also lists its top donors, all teachers unions: the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.

Such disclosure is required under a 2014 state law designed to shed light on the powerful interests that bankroll election-year propaganda.

But the procharter ad is so heavily subsidized by groups that do not have to disclose their donors that trying to trace the money is like opening aRussian nesting doll, said Maurice T. Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts Boston, who has done his own research into the organizations.

“You open one doll, and then you open the next one, and the next one, and we can’t actually find out who’s writing the check,” he said. “I think it’s very dangerous for democracy when you have that sort of thing going on. We may never really know who is paying for these sorts of things.”

State and federal records show many of the groups are led by, or have close ties to, investors in Boston and New York who have spent millions on lobbying and advertising to promote charter schools in other states.

The organization that bought the ad and is leading the campaign in this state is called Great Schools Massachusetts.

As a ballot committee, it is required to disclose its donors, and they include billionaires like Abigail Johnson of Fidelity Investments and Seth Klarman of the Baupost Group, as well as top executives from Bain Capital.

But some of the group’s biggest donors are nonprofits that do not have to reveal their funders.

One of them has a strikingly similar name: Great Schools for Massachusetts. It was established in February, and initially spent nearly $193,000 to lobby state lawmakers.

Wealthy donors, through their contributions to the nonprofit, are helping to finance the new ad, but do not have their names disclosed, as they would if they cut checks directly to the ballot committee that bought the ad.

“It’s a suspicious setup,” said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, a political watchdog group. “It looks like it’s designed to avoid disclosing donors. That is not allowed by Massachusetts law.”

Eileen O’Connor, a spokeswoman for Great Schools Massachusetts, the ballot committee, defended the group’s backers.

“The campaign is excited to have a widespread, bipartisan coalition supporting its mission to provide educational opportunities for all children in the Commonwealth, and will continue to strictly comply with all campaign finance regulations,” she said in a statement.

Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group that advocates for greater transparency in political spending, said some wealthy individuals set up nonprofits because they genuinely want to promote a cause they believe in.

But increasingly, he said, individuals, unions, and corporations are using nonprofits as a way to influence elections while shielding themselves from public scrutiny.

Some donors worry that, if their names were disclosed, it would hurt the image of the candidate or cause they support, or damage their own brand, he said.

In 2010, for example, the retail giant Target faced boycotts and protests after it donated $150,000 to a group that supported Tom Emmer, a Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota who opposed gay marriage.

And in the 2013 Boston mayor’s race, a super PAC called One Boston launched a $500,000 ad to help Martin J. Walsh, a former labor leader who at the time was trying to show he was not beholden to unions. Only after Walsh won the race did the American Federation of Teachers acknowledge that it paid for the ad after routing the money through a nonprofit called One New Jersey.

“They effectively launder their money through intermediary groups, and it’s effectively legal to do that,” Ryan said. “This is the so-called dark money problem that is growing throughout the US.”

Here’s what state and federal records show about the top five groups financing the procharter referendum:

►Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy is chaired by Paul Appelbaum, principal of Rock Ventures LLC, an investment firm in New York. Its vice chairman is Bryan Lawrence of Yorktown Partners, another New York investment firm. Families for Excellent Schools spent $9.6 million to lobby state government in New York in 2014, more than any other entity in the state, according toThe New York Times. Much of it was used to run ads blasting Mayor Bill de Blasio for his opposition to charter schools and praising Governor Andrew Cuomo for supporting them. In 2014, the groupopened an office in Massachusetts, after receiving $700,000 from Strategic Grant Partners, a foundation that receives money from major donors including Klarman, of the Baupost Group. A spokesman for Families for Excellent Schools said its mission is to “ensure that every child attends an excellent school by building coalitions of families and their allies and running campaigns that change education policy.”

►Education Reform Now Advocacy is an arm of Education Reform Now, a national organization that promotes charter schools. According to 2014 tax records, the most recent available, the president is Joe Williams, a former executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, and the policy director is Charles Barone, another staffer at that organization. Neither returned messages seeking comment. In 2010, the group ran an ad in New York criticizing the state’s elected officials for not supporting President Obama’s push to expand charter schools. “Stop listening to the teachers unions!” one woman says in the ad.

►Strong Economy for Growth has been active in Republican politics. Founded in 2013 byErnesto DiGiambattista , chief executive of Cybric, a Boston corporate security firm, it sent direct mail opposing Democratic Representative John Tierney in his successful 2012 reelection campaign against Republican Richard Tisei and gave $165,000 to help Scott Brown when he ran unsuccessfully for Senate in New Hampshire in 2014. DiGiambattista could not reached. A man who answered a phone number listed for him said he would pass on a message to him.

►Great Schools for Massachusetts’ president is Jon Clark, codirector of operations of the Brooke Charter School network; the treasurer is Christopher W. Collins, a cofounder of First Atlantic Capital, a Boston real estate investment firm; and the clerk is Naomi Roth-Gaudette, managing director of organizing at Families for Excellent Schools. Clark and Collins did not return messages.

►Expanding Educational Opportunities was set up July 1 by Bryan Jamele and Valerie Boyns, two employees of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, which is regarded as the state’s most powerful and private business group. Its members include top executives from Fidelity, Bank of America, Vertex, and the Patriots, among others. Because it was established as a ballot committee, and not — like the other four — as a nonprofit, it will have to disclose its donors on Sept. 9, the next legal reporting deadline.The checks are pouring into the charter fight. But who’s signing them - The Boston Globe:

Michael Levenson can be reached
at mlevenson@globe.com.
Follow him on Twitter @mlevenson.The checks are pouring into the charter fight. But who’s signing them - The Boston Globe:

Peter Greene: To Save The Village

To Save The Village:

To Save The Village

Peter Greene 

Teacher and writer; blogger, curmudgucation.blogspot.com

There’s a new documentary out dealing with the history of the Cabrini Green project in Chicago. 70 Acres in Chicago deals with the many complicated issues of race and urban poverty. But as the Slate article about the documentary notes, it underlines another huge issue with the “improvement” of some urban neighborhoods.

The idea behind these housing project upgrades is always pretty simple. Here comes the city to say to the poor folks living in the projects, “Aren’t you tired of living like this? We are going to knock these projects down and replace them with something better. Yes, you are going to have to find another place to live, but when we’ve finished, you’ll be eligible to come back here and live in the newer better place.”

That seems like a great idea, a straightforward way to improve quality of live for those living in public-assistance housing.

But as writer Dianna Douglas notes, that’s not how it works. Mostly, the people who have been displaced by the new project do not come back. The most successful such project in the country was in Atlanta, and that project brought back a whopping 25% of the original residents. The national average “hovers below 19 percent.”

Some of this is simply circumstance. Moving is expensive. Doing it twice is way expensive. But some of this is also design. The Cabrini-Green redevelopment will follow the new model of mixing low-cost housing with higher SES models for a mixed neighborhood. But there’s a problem.

The decrepit, infamous Cabrini-Green had 3,600 public housing units. When the rebuilding is complete in 2019, there will be around 2,830 units. Only 30 percent are for families in public housing. Got that? Fewer than 900 units.

And as Douglas notes, the rules for getting into those limited units can be pretty strict.

The message for the urban poor when it comes to gentrification is simple— we’re going to make this neighborhood better by moving you out of it. Meanwhile the actual humans who have been moved out may find themselves in a rougher situation, an equally bad neighborhood, but now without the neighborhood ties, the little bit of social capital that they had previously worked up in the original (now “improved”) neighborhood.

Does this apply to charter schools in some cities? Here’s a response from a reader in a recent Valerie Strauss/Carol Burris piece at Washington Post

As a mother of four whose children attend public schools and charter schools, I can To Save The Village:

Unaccompanied Minors Turn to Schools Across the Country for an Education - The Atlantic

Unaccompanied Minors Turn to Schools Across the Country for an Education - The Atlantic:

Across the Border and Into School

Thousands of Central American children made a harrowing journey to the United States. Now they are navigating the arduous process of getting an education.

A young migrant from Honduras sits on the railway tracks in Huehuetoca, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Alexandre Meneghini / Reuters

 In the past several years, more than 100,000 children from Central America have fled the violence and poverty of their home countries to travel north—often all alone—for the chance at a better life in the United States.

Most reporters’ accounts of their journeys have detailed their vexing treks and the immediate aftermath of their arrivals; the media has chronicled the possibility—now largely dead—of immigration reform and the ramifications of the surge in unaccompanied minors on U.S. politics. But much less has been reported about the long-term question of what actually happens once these young people are sent to live with family or other caregivers. Across the United States, children are now attempting to build lives for themselves, contending with immigration hearings, and facing the looming possibility of deportation.

As with most young people, school is the daily constant that anchors their lives. For many of these undocumented children, their waking hours are spent mostly in classrooms, where they are attempting to navigate a completely foreign education system. The law is clear: All children in the United States, regardless of immigration status, have the right to a quality public-school education. And while there’s a robust debate over whether or not that should be the case, the fact remains that many of these children will grow up and settle in the United States. Failing to educate them and provide them with the skills for a self-sufficient adulthood only damages the country’s economy and productivity.

Cities have responded to this mandate in distinct ways: In some, a network of programs shepherds families through bureaucratic hurdles, making the process of enrolling in and attending school less daunting. In others, schools and volunteers have cobbled together a tenuous hodgepodge of resources to try and help. But some communities have erected roadblocks—sometimes deliberately, other times because they don’t understand the law—that have made being a student in a new country that much harder.

One day in 2014, Jose, a statuesque 17-year-old with smooth dark skin and short curly hair, told the relatives he lived with in Honduras that he had decided to go north. He had been raised in the murder capital of the world. His father was dead. And Jose wanted to be with his mother, who had traveled to America when he was just a boy. And so, he left.

Jose traveled alone through Guatemala and then through Mexico by train and on foot. It was a difficult trip, and—until immigration officials finally picked him up at the Texas border—he feared he might die of hunger or at the hands of drug cartels every step of the way. As Jose huddled in a frigid detention facility, the authorities tracked down his mother, Dania.

I met Jose (I’ve agreed not to identify him by his full name to preserve his privacy) in the spring of last year at his family’s tiny apartment in a sprawling complex in one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. There, Dania earns what she can at a local butcher shop, but she can barely cover the basics. I visited on a warm day and the apartment was stifling. Jose told me about his journey in Spanish—in a voice almost devoid of emotion—as he sat crammed onto a sofa next to his relatives, all of whom are also undocumented. It was a family that finally felt whole again but that was also desperately fragile after nearly a decade apart. As Unaccompanied Minors Turn to Schools Across the Country for an Education - The Atlantic:

• Young, Illegal, and Alone
• Ed Dept. to Schools: You Must Teach All Students, Regardless Of Legal Status

Sweeney's smear of N.J. teachers union is obnoxious and wrong-headed | Opinion | NJ.com

Sweeney's smear of N.J. teachers union is obnoxious and wrong-headed | Opinion | NJ.com:

Sweeney's smear of N.J. teachers union is obnoxious and wrong-headed

These unions are no longer engaging in public advocacy issues focused on education of our children. Instead, they have made specific threats regarding specific legislative actions that benefit the pocketbooks of its members.

Senate President Stephen Sweeney said that.

A union representative himself, Sweeney made the statement during the recent stir caused by his radioactive decision to kill a vote putting a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would help to secure the extremely insecure state pension fund for public workers.

Setting aside the merits (or lack thereof) regarding this decision, what followed boggles the mind.

Upon realizing that the senator was reneging on his previous commitment to getting the amendment on the ballot this year, the NJEA along with other prominent unions, feeling justifiably aggrieved, publicly contemplated withholding their PAC campaign contributions to state candidates for the November election.

By all appearances this is a perfectly legitimate political position to assume.

Sweeney risks his bid for gov. with shocking jab at unions | Moran

However, Sweeney with astonishing impudence responded by calling for a potential criminal investigation, accusing the unions through their actions of attempted extortion and bribery. 

It seems the senate president may have fallen prey to Gov. Chris Christie's petty and persistent anti-union blather. Our jaded governor has made his feelings on the issue patently clear over the years, once referring to teachers unions — and by association teachers themselves — as "selfish and greedy." More recently, he made the ludicrous assertion that the union is "the single most destructive force for public education."

Yes, even more than poverty, apparently. 

Christie has topped off these divisive attacks with a steadfast refusal to stick to his own pension reform law passed in 2011, consistently underfunding the pension system even as public workers continue to pay their fair share. Somehow, though, the governor has found the money to dole out nearly $6 billion and counting in corporate tax breaks while in office with little discernible benefit to the state economy.

When Sweeney claims that the NJEA is no longer focused on child education and advocacy but rather the financial well-being of union members, he reinforces an old canard ruthlessly brandished by ill-intentioned teacher's union detractors.

It conveys the false choice that NJEA members and leaders can't be deeply dedicated to their students while simultaneously insisting upon due respect for themselves and their profession.

Of course these conditions are not mutually exclusive. They are actually symbiotic.

In order to optimally help shape the academic, social, and emotional development of the next generation our public school educators need to feel a certain degree of security.

Public employees vested in the state system rightfully consider their pension not an entitlement but deferred compensation. A public employee pension has been described quite simply as a long-term, interest-free loan that public workers grant to the state with the reasonable expectation that they will be paid back at the point of retirement. It is money they earned.

It is quite understandable why a palpable sense of agitation has spread among the nearly one million public workers as this implicit pact is breached on the whims of politicians in Trenton.

How bitterly ironic when the threatened are charged with being threatening.

Perhaps Sweeney has forgotten the indispensable role unions actually play in a well-functioning society.

Stop demonizing teachers, governor | Editorial

The fact is, we promised these people a salary and benefits when they taught our kids. It is embedded in their contracts and in the law.

The Economic Policy Institute recently released a report asserting that unions help stave off income equality, highlighting how declining union membership has been a fundamental driver of this inequality over recent decades.

Another analysis, by the National Women's Law Center, revealed that unions significantly help narrow the troubling pay gap between men and women. Additionally, recent studies by Harvard University and the Washington Post have found a link between strong teacher unions and positive academic outcomes for students.

As Labor Day approaches — and our public school teachers soon welcome back their students with open arms and a full heart — let us remember to appreciate all public workers and the unions that fortify them.

Bill Cole is a school psychologist and a publicist for the Morris County Council of Education Associations (MCCEA). 

Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook. 

 About 100 NJEA members protested outside of Senate President Stephen Sweeney's West Deptford office on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016, calling for the legislator to post the pension bill so it can head to a referendum this November. NJEA President Marie Blistan addresses the crowd. (Caitlyn Stulpin | For NJ.com)

 Sweeney's smear of N.J. teachers union is obnoxious and wrong-headed | Opinion | NJ.com:

Trump’s perplexing comments about education - The Washington Post

Trump’s perplexing comments about education - The Washington Post:

Trump’s perplexing comments about education

Donald Trump said a few things recently about education that are, well, perplexing.

One set of comments left anyone who knows anything about the past few decades of public education reform  wondering how much the Republican presidential nominee knows about it, while the other raised questions about where Trump is getting education policy from — besides his daughter, Ivanka.

Trump was in Milwaukee on Tuesday, where he spoke broadly about what kind of education policy he supports. Specifically, he said:

“On education, it is time to have school choice, merit pay for teachers, and to end the tenure policies that hurt good teachers and reward bad teachers. We are going to put students and parents first.”

As lawyer and blogger Stephen Dyer noted, it is hard to imagine why Trump would say “it is time” for school choice. This past June, the charter school movement — a pillar of school choice — celebrated its 25th anniversary, and more than 6,500 of these publicly funded schools now educate between 2½ and 3 million students around the country.

Another central part of the choice movement are private school vouchers. Trump, whether he knew it or not, was speaking in the city where school vouchers began in 1990. Vouchers — and other similar programs — essentially use public funds to pay for private school tuition. There are now nearly 30 states with a voucher or tax-credit program or something similar.

Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program, the country’s longest-running voucher program, created ostensibly to provide quality school choices for children from low-income families, has not only failed to bridge the achievement gap but has also, critics say, harmed traditional public schools by siphoning off resources. A recent study of voucher schools in Milwaukee by University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh Professor Michael R. Ford, a voucher supporter and a  former vice Trump’s perplexing comments about education - The Washington Post:

Seattle Schools Community Forum: 100 Black Parents Meeting on Garfield

Seattle Schools Community Forum: 100 Black Parents Meeting on Garfield:

100 Black Parents Meeting on Garfield

Before starting this thread I want to acknowledge that long-time (and beloved) staffer, Joe Bland, died on August 11th.  From the Garfield PTSA Facebook page:

Joe was a cherished presence at Garfield High School for almost 30 years where he worked as a teachers assistant in the gym (basketball, volleyball and wrestling), with the kids in detention and the incoming freshmen in the Bridge Program. His warmth and kindness touched so many.

I went to this meeting truly not knowing what to expect. 

First, kudos to the 100 Black Parents group.  The meeting was well-organized, they had water available (it was hot - I brought a hand fan), an well-thought out agenda and even a door prize. 

The meeting was led by Anita Adams (who works for the Mayor's office as an advisor but I believe was only there as a 100 Black Parents member) and Chukundi Salisbury (who owns a media company but again, was there as a 100 Black Parents leader.)  
Second, the meeting featured an elder, Mrs Horton, who said that they wouldn't have a prayer as they normally would to start the meeting (I think in deference to the topic and that not all in the meeting might be members of Mt. Zion Baptist) but we had a moment of silence.  At the end, she said, "Amen."   I had to smile. 


Mr. Salisbury set a very easy-going tone and said that sometimes African-American parents can be "reactive" but that this meeting was about being "proactive."  He said he wanted the focus on not what has or had not happened but what their group wants to see happen.

He also said that while the teachers were here to talk about Honors for All, that Seattle Schools Community Forum: 100 Black Parents Meeting on Garfield:





Seattle Schools Community Forum: KUOW Looking for Input - http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2016/08/kuow-looking-for-input.html

Tears, hugs, follow jurors’ $3.1 million award to whistleblower in teacher credentialing case | The Sacramento Bee

Tears, hugs, follow jurors’ $3.1 million award to whistleblower in teacher credentialing case | The Sacramento Bee:

Tears, hugs, follow jurors’ $3.1 million award to whistleblower in teacher credentialing case

Kathleen Carroll, a former attorney for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, lost her job after disclosing a three-year backlog in teacher misconduct complaints and other problems at the agency. Then-state Auditor Elaine Howle characterized the commission as one of the “worst run” agencies she had ever investigated. Loretta Kalb The Sacramento Bee



Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article96739087.html#storylink=cpy

A Sacramento woman fired from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing after disclosing a three-year backlog in teacher misconduct complaints has won a $3.1 million jury verdict in a lawsuit against the agency and two of its executives.

Whistle blower Kathleen Carrroll, an attorney for the commission until her termination in November 2010, revealed sweeping backlogs, nepotism in the agency and favoritism that within a year led to a blistering state audit of its educator discipline process. Then-state Auditor Elaine Howle characterized the commission as one of the “worst run” agencies she had ever investigated.

Carroll said she cried after the jury verdict. “This has been six years of my life,” Carroll said this week. “As the jurors were walking out, some of them had tears in their eyes and came to me and hugged me. It was very emotional. I think they put themselves in my position. They seemed very compassionate about what I went through.”

Sacramento Superior Court jurors issued their verdict Aug. 10 following a 20-day trial and after little more than six hours of deliberations, said Dan Siegel, Carroll’s attorney in Oakland. The whistleblower retaliation suit named the commission along with former General Counsel Mary Armstrong, who headed the division that oversaw teacher sanctions, and Assistant Chief Counsel Lee Pope. Both have since retired.

The commission issued a statement expressing, in part, disappointment with the outcome. Neither Armstrong nor Pope responded to Bee requests for comment.

In 2012, Carroll lost her appeal to the State Personnel Board for reinstatement, failing to prove she was dismissed because of whistle-blowing. But Superior Court jurors this month did find that Carroll’s whistleblowing contributed to the commission’s decision to fire her. Jurors held the commission liable for the bulk of the $3.1 million in damages. The award included punitive damages against Pope of $130,000 and against Armstrong of $90,000. The law does not allow punitive damages against public agencies.

Carroll said the years of court battles have been both emotionally and financially draining. As a heart transplant recipient, she deals with high medical bills and has spent all her personal and retirement savings. She has not been able to buy tickets to visit her mother in Connecticut, who is 87 and in ill health. “There were many times I felt like I have got to see my Mom and this is not worth it,” she said. She said her mother cannot understand why Carroll has not to come to visit.

“I could have just looked the other way,” Carroll said. “But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. These were not little offenses; they were serious.”

Siegel said while many complaints against school employees with credentials are routine, others can involve child molestation, child pornography or drug addiction. “What Kathy learned was there was a huge backlog of work” of all sorts that wasn’t being processed, he said. During the years required for the commission to act, teachers could leave one school district and get a job in another.

Carroll said some cases would have resulted in mandatory license revocations because of court convictions.“They are automatically revoked,” she said, “and that was not happening. That was one of the things that pushed me.

“There were stacks of paper everywhere. Some were in desks and some in boxes. They hadn’t been entered into the computers. Student assistants were finding those serious convictions in some of those stacks.” The day of that discovery, she said, “my heart dropped.” One case left unaddressed for three years involved a middle school teacher arrested for allegedly showing pornography to a student, she said. When the commission finally pursued it, they could no longer find witnesses.

“That person is still teaching today,” she said.

When she sounded the backlog alarm with colleagues, she said, “I was shunned like I was radioactive.” Then, according to the lawsuit, Armstrong told commissioners at a public meeting in August 2009 there were only little backlogs from time to time.

Siegel said when Carroll raised the issue, executives at the commission “basically blew her off.” In mid December 2009, Carroll turned to the Bureau of State Audits’ Whistleblower Hotline and later spoke to a member of then-Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg’s staff. “They did their due diligence and concluded she knew what she was talking about,” he said. Steinberg requested the audit, which began in mid-2010.

Siegel described Carroll as admirable character who “went out on a limb” for what she believed. He said that in the months leading up to Carroll’s firing in November 2010, some of the commission’s executive leadership “began plotting to see how they could get rid of her.” They tried to lay her off, proposing her elimination as cost-cutting measure tied to just one employee, according to the suit. Ultimately, the commission fired her outright.

The audit found major flaws in nearly every aspect of the commission regulatory process, including lapses in launching investigations, gathering facts, tracking cases and revoking or suspending teacher credentials for misconduct. The backlog reached 12,600 cases at one point. Surveys tied to the audit showed that 40 percent of employees said hiring and promotion at the agency were compromised by family relationships or favoritism. And 43 percent of respondents at the commission said they feared retaliation if they filed a grievance or formal complaints.

At a Joint Legislative Audit Committee hearing in May 2011, then-Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, a Bell Gardens Democrat, said he wanted to see a shakeup of the commission’s 15-member governing board and called for resignations at the head of the agency.

“Somebody needs to be held accountable for the gross mismanagement of the commission,” said Lara, who chaired the committee and is now a state senator. The next month, Executive Director Dale Janssen said he would retire.

The commission this week signaled that it could appeal. “The Commission will carefully consider all legal options before deciding how to move forward,” the agency statement said. “The events surrounding this case occurred nearly seven years ago under far different circumstances. The commission has undergone a complete transformation in serving the needs of California's students and teachers.”

The commission meets September 8 and 9 and is expected to consider in closed session whether to recommend an appeal of damages, said spokesman Joshua Speaks. Commissioners could also consider whether to recommend that the state pay the punitive damages jurors found against Armstrong and Pope.

Asked what’s next for her, Carroll said, “My priority is to see my mom.”Tears, hugs, follow jurors’ $3.1 million award to whistleblower in teacher credentialing case | The Sacramento Bee: Loretta Kalb: 916-321-1073, @LorettaSacBee

What Comes Next? Part 2 - United Opt Out at the Crossroads

What Comes Next? Part 2 - United Opt Out at the Crossroads:

What Comes Next? Part 2 - United Opt Out at the Crossroads

Pleas e join Internet radio host Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. and special guest Dr. Mark Naison for a special two hour show devoted to United Opt Out.


Dr. Miller and Dr. Naison will be examining what is going on with United Opt Out. They will discuss what the movement has done in the past and what will it may be doing in the futiure. They will attempt to bring some clarification to recent changes in this crtically important group.


The discussion will be enlightening and will bring understanding to what has been taking place as United Opt Out takes a new direction.


Please tune in and call in this Sunday.

This is the RESISTANCE and we need to be unified in our fight against those forces overtaking and usurping our public schools.

Knowledge is power !

RESISTANCE MATTERS
RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE
RESISTANCE IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF EXPRESSION OF DEMOCRACY

RESISTANCE IS SURVIVAL

Please click on the website below to listen live:
http://bbsradio.com/thewarreport
2:00 PM PDT
4:00 PM CDT
5:00 PM EDT

or
A direct listen-in line only
Station 1 - 716-748-0150
To call-in and interact live
Station 1 888-627-6008 toll free 

 What Comes Next? Part 2 - United Opt Out at the Crossroads:

Big Education Ape: I Don't Belong To Any Organized Party: I'm A Democrat - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/08/i-dont-belong-to-any-organized-party-im.html

Most charter boards didn’t comply with or know about open-meetings law | The Lens

Most charter boards didn’t comply with or know about open-meetings law | The Lens:

Most charter boards didn’t comply with or know about open-meetings law

Until The Lens investigated last month, only one charter school board in New Orleans may have been fully complying with a two-year-old state law that requires public bodies to post their minutes online, or an older law that requires the same for their agendas.  

And even now, as most work to comply, few are completely falling into line with amendments to the state Open Meetings Law that legislators made in 2012 and 2014.

The Lens this summer examined the websites of the 40 Orleans Parish charter school boards, which run 81 schools in the city, to gauge compliance.

The posting of these official documents is more than a technicality or an administrative requirement. Few news media outlets are able or willing to commit the resources necessary to cover the meetings of these publicly funded boards, which collectively manage hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Few parents attend these meetings. The minutes are one of the few ways to easily keep track of a board’s actions.

Even for some school boards that post the documents, the minutes lack basic information required by law.

And regarding a third, more recent law that went into effect just at the beginning of the month, fewer than half listed their official custodian of records. That’s the person responsible for providing public records to those who request them.

Transparency and good government were why the Louisiana Legislature updated the Open Meetings Law, said Rep. Neil Abramson, (D-New Orleans), the author of the 2014 bill. He said he wouldn’t be surprised to hear if other public bodies were failing to post official accounts of their meetings.

“A lot of people don’t know of all the different requirements that are around.”
—Nahliah Webber,
Orleans Public Education Network

“I’d imagine if the charter schools aren’t doing it, it’s not unique to them,” he said. “Other people are probably dropping the ball where they shouldn’t.”

When we first looked, seven of the 40 school boards regularly were posting minutes for their full board meetings. Only the board of New Orleans College Preparatory Academies was closest to meeting all the requirements by posting thesame documentation for its committees. However, the minutes posted by that board didn’t have some of the legally required information, including who was absent from the meeting.

For the boards that have formed committees — nothing requires public bodies to do so — much of the substantive discussion takes place in those smaller meetings, and full boards usually approve their recommendations with little discussion.

The law requires the boards to keep the minutes posted for at least three months.

The Lens emailed the 33 fully non-compliant boards for explanations. Some blamed website revisions or other technical issues, others said they weren’t aware of the law and others offered no reason or didn’t respond.

Within two weeks, 30 boards posted their full board meeting minutes to their websites. However, none included committees, though some have recently begun to do so.

OLD-SCHOOL NOTES, SILENCE AND IGNORANCE OF THE LAW

Andrew Shahn, the ARISE Academy principal, said their latest minutes were not posted because they were written by hand instead of electronically.

A few boards, including those of the Algiers Charter School Association and Friends of King, declined to comment.

The Community Leaders Advocating Student Success board, which governs Fannie C. Williams Charter School, never responded to several calls or emails, but its site was among those quickly updated.

The head of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, which includes 12 schools in the city, said its boards “just weren’t aware” that the law was amended two years ago to require posting meeting minutes online.

The amendment “slipped through the cracks in the way it was referenced,” said Executive Director Ken Ducote. “It was not flagged in Most charter boards didn’t comply with or know about open-meetings law | The Lens:

 

Charter Schools: The New Private Prisons? Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

Charter Schools: The New Private Prisons?

By:  Mitchell Robinson Originally published on his blog at http://www.mitchellrobinson.net/2016/08/18/charter-schools-the-new-private-prisons/

A new report from the Justice Departmentrecommends the suspension of contracts for private prisons, effective immediately. In explaining the justification for this decision, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates concluded that "the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government."

Teachers and those who have observed the impact of the corporate education reform agenda on public education over the last decade or so may notice some striking similarities between the findings of this Justice Department report and the explosion of the charter school industry in our country. As with the private prison scenario, the explosion of charter schools in the last decade has created parallel school systems--both allegedly public, but fighting for limited resources, and competing on an uneven playing field.

As my friend, Steven Singer, says: "In Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to have 'separate but equal' schools, because when they’re separate, they’re rarely equal. Having two parallel systems of education makes it too easy to provide more resources to some kids and less to others."

Initially proposed in the 1970s as a "laboratory in innovation" for pedagogical practices, and even embraced by AFT President Albert Shanker in 1988, charter schools were intended to function as incubators for innovative teaching techniques, strategies and policies.

Today, the experiment has been co-opted in many states by "for-profit" charter school management companies, such as K12.com, which was supported by the investments ofconvicted felon Michael Milken. These for-profit networks are characterized by schools staffed with uncertified, lowly-paid, alternatively-prepared short-term faculty, many of whom are ill-equipped to handle the duties of teaching. These teachers are expected to deliver scripted lessons from canned curriculums, and follow a "teach to the test" approach controlled by "no-excuses" behavior management strategies that result in a joyless educational experience marked by high rates of student suspension, especially among Badass Teachers Association:

Test Question: Why Are Newspapers in Washington State Fighting to Save Charter Schools? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Test Question: Why Are Newspapers in Washington State Fighting to Save Charter Schools? | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Test Question: Why Are Newspapers in Washington State Fighting to Save Charter Schools?

In Washington state, supporters of public schools–Like the League of Women Voters–have filed a lawsuit to stop the legislature from funding charter schools, which the state’s highest court declared are NOT public schools, because their boards are not elected.

Somehow, across the state, major newspapers posted editorials opposing any effort to block charters, some using the exact same language. Do you find that odd? Parent activist Dora Taylor does. Read her account here.

She writes:

“There are many who are unhappy about the new lawsuit against the new charter school law. This includes several editorial boards across the state with some exceptions. What’s quite telling about their arguments are three things.

“Their arguments seem to be on the notion that this is a frivolous lawsuit and we should just leave the charter schools to do their thing.

“Another issue I found is that some of these editorials so closely mirror each other (down the the use of the word “distraction” in two headlines) that you would think someone faxed out talking points. The Times uses the word four times.

“Still another issue is that some of them are saying it’s the teachers union and “a coalition of groups.” Why wouldn’t they acknowledge who is in that group which includes parents and solid citizen, non-union groups like League of Women Voters and El Centro de la Raza? Why? Because they know it would not serve their viewpoint to be honest on who stood up to put their names on the lawsuit.

“It’s also of interest that some editorials leave out that there appear to be a couple of constitutional issues and instead, tell their readers it’s about “thwarting the will of the voters.” The Times goes so far as to say it’s an “intimidation tactic.”

“It’s a sad day when trying to stand up for the constitution is considered a bad thing. Maybe the people who wrote these laws should have thought of the constitution as they did their work (see Article 3, Section 22.) That names the role of the state superintendent and “public schools.” If the state superintendent is to oversee all public schools, does that mean he/she gets to oversee them in the same manner or do charters get a different oversight? And who decides? That role is not written into this law.”

Just to be clear: Fighting to privatize public schools is a good thing. Fighting to stop privatization is not. Why “distract” from what Bill Gates wants? He paid for the referendum.Test Question: Why Are Newspapers in Washington State Fighting to Save Charter Schools? | Diane Ravitch's blog:

With A Brooklyn Accent: School Reform in the US and Italy: A Critical Analysis

With A Brooklyn Accent: School Reform in the US and Italy: A Critical Analysis:

School Reform in the US and Italy: A Critical Analysis

It is very disturbing to learn that the same attack on teachers, public schools, and public education that has taken place in the US in the last 20 years is also taking place in Italy. In the US, this attack has been bi-partisan, endorsed by Democrats as much as Republicans, and implemented as aggressively by Barack Obama as it was by George W. Bush. It has been enthusiastically promoted by foundations and non profit organizations financed by some of the wealthiest people in the country such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family, Michael Bloomberg, along with new billionaires in the hedge fund sector. Initially, teachers and advocates for public education were caught by surprise by the sheer force of this attack. In the last 8 years, they have started to fight back, with resistance taking the form of the Save Our Schools Coalition, the Badass Teachers Association, United Opt Out and Network for Public Education, along with a wide array of local resistance groups. But the amount of money and political muscle the self styled “School Reformers” have at their disposal makes resistance difficult, especially since the Reformers have co-opted the language of Social Justice and Civil Rights to argue for policies which increase testing and reduce teacher power and autonomy. They have argued that it is “bad” or selfish teachers who are responsible for the persistence of racial and economic inequality in school performance, if not in the whole society.

Why has this top down, data driven approach to education policy, which devalues teachers and teaching gained so much currency? One part of it is sheer economic interest. The education market in the US is enormous, with total expenditures exceeding 600 billion dollars. Capturing this market for private investment is an irresistible temptation for economic elites who have seen opportunities in the housing market dry up with the onset of the global financial crisis. Opportunities to invest in With A Brooklyn Accent: School Reform in the US and Italy: A Critical Analysis: