Speak Up! Reach Out! Let's Integrate our Schools! - SF Public School Mom

Speak Up! Reach Out! Let's Integrate our Schools! - SF Public School MomSF Public School Mom:

Speak Up! Reach Out! Let’s Integrate our Schools!

I’m cross posting this event that I’m organizing with friends on the SF Families Union. Check out the official website and Facebook page, and join us this Saturday!

---

Advocating for Equity in Separate and Unequal Schools

This coming September 24, 2016 we are organizing an event to bring together family advocates like you from schools across the district. All of our children lose out when we have separate and unequal schools – kids of color more than White and more affluent kids, but we all lose.

At this meeting we will learn from each other about the conditions in our schools, how to be effective advocates for equity and create the schools our children deserve, and we will connect together to be a stronger voice on district wide issues.

Organizations which support families like Coleman Advocates, Our Family Coalition(LGBTQ families) and Legal Services will be there to share information about rights and resources for families. Finally, we’ll be inviting you to join workgroups to get to work creating the meaningfully integrated, equitable schools our kids deserve, where they can play and learn together.

To make the biggest impact, bring a group of families from your school!

Please join us September 24th from 2-4 PM at 251 18th Ave, SF, CA 94117. RSVP here so we have a good count for food, translation and childcare. https://actionnetwork.org/events/advocating-effectively-in-separate-and-unequal-schools

Advocating for Equity in Separate and Unequal Schools

SF Families Union Meeting
September 24th 2016

2:00-4:00 PM
251 18th Ave, SF, CA 94117 (in Richmond)
Childcare and snacks provided, please RSVP to reserve your spot.

Click to RSVP

Invite your friends!

Click the image below to download flyers and share with your friends. The more families come, the more power we have to create positive change in SF schools!

http://sfpsmom.com/speak-up-reach-out/

Donald Trump Presidency Would Mean The 'Decimation Of Public Education,' Says Top Teachers Union Leader | Huffington Post

Donald Trump Presidency Would Mean The 'Decimation Of Public Education,' Says Top Teachers Union Leader | Huffington Post:

Donald Trump Presidency Would Mean The ‘Decimation Of Public Education,’ Says Top Teachers Union Leader

“The guy’s narcissism makes him so dangerous.”

WASHINGTON ― Randi Weingarten has been an outspoken surrogate for Hillary Clinton. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, and her American Federation of Teachers was the first national labor union to make a presidential endorsement in the 2016 cycle.

The reason she’s so worried about Donald Trump, she told a small gathering of reporters Wednesday, goes far beyond what he would do to schools in this country. Think launching a war based on a bruised ego and fundamentally changing what it means to be president of the United States. 

“The guy’s narcissism makes him so dangerous,” Weingarten said. “You have no idea sitting here whether he would get us into a war simply because he’s mad at someone. There’s not someone who’s been elected as president who is as mercurial, who is as dangerous, as what this guy says any day of the week.”

Weingarten has already heard from teachers around the country who are worried about what effect Trump’s rhetoric is having on students. A teacher in Dearborn, Michigan, for example, told her she had a student come up and ask whether she and her family will be deported. 

In March, The Washington Post reported that third-grade students in Fairfax County, Virginia, told a child with darker skin that he would have to leave if Trump becomes president. And at a high school basketball game in Indiana, students from a predominantly white school chanted “Build the wall!” ― a Trump refrain ― when playing a predominantly Latino school.

“If the guy running for president mocks a disabled reporter the way he did, what do you do if you are a schoolteacher now after that? ... When we try in schools to stop bullying, to increase tolerance, to celebrate diversity, how do you have the president of the United States doing exactly the opposite? How do you create an environment that respects each other, that teaches people if that happens?” she asked. 

Weingarten said AFT is considering having town hall meetings allowing teachers to step forward and testify about this “Trump effect” and what is happening in schools.

The labor leader has also spoken out about Trump’s $20 billion voucher proposal, which would use federal funds to create state-run block grants allowing students to enroll in private and charter schools. Weingarten said it would take away federal funds for low-income students, students with disabilities and other public school resources, as well as Pell Grants used to attend college. 

“It’s the decimation of public education,” she said, “and no one should pretend it’s anything other than that.”

The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.

Weingarten has already been talked about as a possible education secretary in a Clinton administration, but she said she wasn’t focused on that prospect and said it was “ridiculous” to speculate about it right now.

“My focus right now is on doing everything in our power to save our country and save civilization,” she said, “which means to get Hillary Clinton elected.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar,rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.Donald Trump Presidency Would Mean The 'Decimation Of Public Education,' Says Top Teachers Union Leader | Huffington Post:

Why Massachusetts Voters Should Think Twice About Charter Expansion | deutsch29

Why Massachusetts Voters Should Think Twice About Charter Expansion | deutsch29:

Why Massachusetts Voters Should Think Twice About Charter Expansion

This post highlights excerpts from a September 22, 2016, post written by New Jersey teacher and ed policy doctoral student (Rutgers), Mark Weber.

In his post, Weber compares the attrition of Boston charter high schools to Boston public high schools, and he considers groups of students who begin as 9th graders and remain at a given school to complete 12th grade (such a group is known as a cohort).

When comparing Boston charter high schools to Boston public high schools, Weber found that across ten years (2005 to 2014), the lowest percentage retained by Boston public high schools (66 percent) was higher than the largest percentage retained by Boston charter high schools (56 percent). (Click image to enlarge.)

Weber observes:

In the last decade, Boston’s charter sector has had substantially greater cohort attrition than the Boston Public Schools. In fact, even though the data is noisy, you could make a pretty good case the difference in cohort attrition rates has grown over the last five years.

Is this proof that the independent charters are doing a bad job? I wouldn’t say so; I’m sure these schools are full of dedicated staff, working hard to serve their students. But there is little doubt that the public schools are doing a job that charters are not: they are educating the kids who don’t stay in the charters, or who arrive too late to feel like enrolling in them is a good choice.

Weber discusses the importance of considering both the coming and going of a school’s students. If a school does not “backfill,” or replace students who leave with other students who arrive later, then the cohorts become smaller with passing years– with remaining students representing “a less mobile population, as Weber notes:

…This (backfilling) is a key issue in determining if charters can be scaled up to take a larger share of students. If charters are not backfilling, they are 

Why Massachusetts Voters Should Think Twice About Charter Expansion | deutsch29:

 

Walton public school attack continues for Massachusetts charters and Arkansas vouchers | Arkansas Blog

Walton public school attack continues for Massachusetts charters and Arkansas vouchers | Arkansas Blog | Arkansas news, politics, opinion, restaurants, music, movies and art:

Walton public school attack continues for Massachusetts charters and Arkansas vouchers

Massachusetts voters will consider this fall removing the cap on charter schools and the battle has been bruising, with the Billionaires Club that backs charter schools investing heavily to continue its assault on conventional public schools.

Massachusetts, by the way, is a national leader in education.

Here's a report on spending in the charter school battle. It should be no surprise that Jim and Alice Walton have contributed $1.8 million between them to the campaign to remove the charter school cap. It's part of their massive effort to tear down conventional public school districts for a marketplace model.

As luck had it, I got a reminder of one of the Walton assaults in Arkansas last night.

I got a call at home to participate in a "town hall" on the new school voucher programthat the Waltons helped push through the legislature in 2015.  It's a beginning step to the Billionaires Club's holy grail — school vouchers for all. The "Success Scholarship" is open to any student with an individual education plan, or IEP. Again: Any student, no matter how small or large the special education condition that requires some special attention — a slight speech impediment, for example. They must come from a year in a public school.

The town hall was put on by a Walton-backed organization, the Reform Alliance, which is spending big sums of Walton money to recruit people to take this money to go to private schools. The group has been designated by the Walton-controlled Education Department (former Republican Sen. Johnny Key, prop.) to oversee the scholarship program. That means it is unaccountable to the public because it is funded by Waltons and not the state. It's an open question if the Alliance will reveal how many people applied, how many were accepted, the sorts of needs met and the demographics of those served.

I put a question to a screener and, when they ran out of questions, the moderator finally dealt with mine. The moderator had already said anybody can apply — no restrictions apart from the required IEP and a year in public school — but she emphasized the schools that participate make the call on who's selected. I asked what's to guarantee that the private schools won't take the students with the slightest problems  and refuse difficult cases (as one school has already said it would do).

"Interesting question," said the moderator. She then proceeded to dodge it. She reiterated that anyone could apply. I didn't ask about applications. I asked about acceptance. I expect the public will not be able to get answers from private schools about their decisions to accept some and not others.

The town hall also included an "expert" from the Walton-financed education reform unit at their university branch in Fayetteville. She claimed great success with voucher Walton public school attack continues for Massachusetts charters and Arkansas vouchers | Arkansas Blog | Arkansas news, politics, opinion, restaurants, music, movies and art:

John Thompson Education reform: Title I funds only part of the solution - NonDoc

Education reform: Title I funds only part of the solution - NonDoc:

Education reform: Title I funds only part of the solution

I described the complexities of school funding and why the simplistic criticisms of local and state education systems are unjustified in a previous post here on NonDoc. The same applies to the 12 percent or so of funding that comes from the federal government.

Federal policies are flawed, but we should not be too quick to judge. It makes no more sense to bash the Feds than it does to issue a blanket condemnation of state and local government. However, we can’t ignore the headaches that their regulations can create for school systems. Moreover, the mandates that have accompanied federal money during the last few years have become exceptionally costly in terms of the energy educators have devoted to meeting those dubious demands.

Title I money …

When the federal government began to make significant investments in schools, it faced a dilemma that remains intractable in many ways. The most important program was Title I, and it sought to redress longstanding inequities. Unless the national government engaged in micromanaging, how could it prevent localities from diverting this new money to other programs? The most famous example was that of Claiborne Parish in Louisiana, which had a child poverty rate of 36 percent and infamously used its Title I funds “to build not one, but two Olympic-sized swimming pools for students.”

Consequently, the key principle that guided Title I was supplement not supplant. Federal money was to be treated as an additional resource for disadvantaged students and not used to replace existing funding for general-education students.

(By the way, a second huge controversy is known as “comparability.” Since veteran teachers tend to become exhausted and transfer out of high-poverty schools, those schools tend to have less experienced teachers with lower salaries, meaning that less money, per student, is often invested in poor schools. All stakeholders would support extra resources to address that unfair reality, but teachers have to worry that the current Education reform: Title I funds only part of the solution - NonDoc:

A New Book about VAMs “On Trial” | VAMboozled!

A New Book about VAMs “On Trial” | VAMboozled!:

A New Book about VAMs “On Trial”

I recently heard about a new book that was written by Mark Paige — J.D. and Ph.D., assistant professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, and a former school law attorney — and published by Rowman & Littlefield. The book is about, as per the secondary part of its title “Understanding Value-Added Models [VAMs] in the Law of Teacher Evaluation.” See more on this book, including information about how to purchase it, for those of you who might be interested in reading more, here, and also via Amazon here.

Clearly, this book is to prove very relevant given the ongoing court cases across the country (see a prior post on these cases here) regarding teachers and the systems being used to evaluate them when especially (or extremely) reliant upon VAM-based estimates for consequential decision-making purposes (e.g., teacher tenure, pay, and termination). While I have not yet read the book, I just ordered my copy the other day. I suggest you do the same, again, should you be interested in further or better understanding the federal and state law pertinent to these cases.

Notwithstanding, I also requested that the author of this book — Mark Paige — write a guest post so that you too could find out more. Here is what he wrote:

Many of us have been following VAMs in legal circles. Several courts have faced the issue of VAMs as they relate to employment law matters. These cases have tested a chief selling point (pardon [or underscore] the business reference) of VAMs: that they will effectuate, for example, teacher termination with greater ease because nobody besides the advanced statisticians and econometricians can argue with their numbers derived. In other words, if a teacher’s VAM rating is bad, then the teacher must be bad. It’s to be as simple as that. How can a court deny that, reality?

Of course, as we [should] already know, VAMs are anything but certain. Bluntly stated: VAMs are a statistical “hot mess.” The American Statistical Association, among many others, warned in no uncertain terms that VAMs cannot – and should not – be trusted to make significant employment decisions. Of course, that has not stopped many policymakers from a full-throated adoption of their use in employment and evaluation decisions. Talk about hubris.

Accordingly, I recently completed this book, again, that focuses squarely at the intersection of VAMs and the law. Its full title is “Building a Better Teacher: Understanding A New Book about VAMs “On Trial” | VAMboozled!:

Cartoons on the Pluses and Minuses of Technology | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Cartoons on the Pluses and Minuses of Technology | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Cartoons on the Pluses and Minuses of Technology

Living in Silicon Valley as I do and seeing every-day technologies around me in people walking, eyes down, looking at their smart phones, electric autos, and driver-less cars, so much is taken for granted. The cornucopia of technology runneth over. Yet it is never too late to poke at the pomposity and “irrational exuberance” that accompanies such love for the next new thing. So this month’s cartoons does that. Enjoy !

 More at Cartoons on the Pluses and Minuses of Technology | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Acting On Bill Ayers’ Radical Manifesto | PopularResistance.Org

Acting On Bill Ayers’ Radical Manifesto | PopularResistance.Org:

Acting On Bill Ayers’ Radical Manifesto

Bill Ayers -- Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto | Haymarket Books -http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Demand-the-Impossible

Bill Ayers’ short new book, Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto, is different from the typical liberal view of a better world in two ways. First, its goals are a bit grander, more inspiring. Second, it adds as the first and most important goal one that others don’t include at all.

A typical proposal that a lesser evilist might give for “voting against Donald Trump” might include minor economic or police or prison reforms, a bit of environmentalism, healthcare, or education. Ayers wants to abolish prisons, end capitalism, disarm the police, redesign schools, create universal healthcare, and nationalize energy companies. And he’s right. The radical vision is the better one, not just because it leads to a better place but also because the incrementalist approach will get us all killed — only a bit more slowly than doing nothing.

The more important, because rarer, difference in Ayers’ manifesto is the addition of the missing topic. Most U.S. “progressives” imagine a world of greater economic equality and opportunity, environmental sustainability, fewer police killings, shorter prison sentences, investment in human needs, and the withering away of all sorts of bigotries, prejudices, sexisms, racisms, and other sorts of unfairness and cruelty — resulting in a multicultural community all united in our support for dumping a trillion dollars a year into preparing for battle with our collectively loathed foreign enemies, and supporting the weapons trade as a supposed economic program.

Ayers takes a different approach. “What,” he asks, “if we broke from the dogma of militarism — rejecting the anemic and seemingly endless debates about whether the United States should bomb this country or instead boycott some other country . . . — and organized an irresistible social upheaval strong enough to stop U.S. invasions and conquest[?] What if we occupied bases, blocked munitions shipments and private militias, boycotted arms dealers, sabotaged surveillance operations and drone manufacturers — and forced the U.S. government to disarm and close all foreign military bases within a year? . . . Or what if we built a colossal transnational movement that organized shadow elections (initially), inviting any resident of a country with a U.S. military presence within its borders to vote in U.S. national elections?”

Ayers proposes that we take on the culture of militarism, not just the industrial structure of it. “[I]magine,” he writes, “any bit of the war culture transformed into a peace-and-love culture: the Super Bowl opening with thousands of local school kids rushing through the stands distributing their poetry, and then everyone singing ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ or ‘Give Peace a Chance,’ or ‘We Shall Overcome’; an airlines or bus terminal clerk saying, ‘We want to invite any teachers or nurses in the gate area to board first, and we thank you for your service’; urban high schools eliminating ROTC and banning military recruiters in favor of school-wide assemblies for peace recruiters featuring Code Pink, and after-school programs led by Black Youth Project 100 and the American Friends Service Committee.”

Some of us like this idea so much we’ve organized an event this weekend to try to advance it. The event is called #NoWar2016. This Friday and Saturday, you can watch the live stream at TheRealNews.com. Videos of Friday through Sunday will be quickly posted online. Sunday will include activism workshops and a planning session for a protest at the Pentagon at 9 a.m. Monday morning. The details are all athttp://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016.Acting On Bill Ayers’ Radical Manifesto | PopularResistance.Org:

 Big Education Ape: DEMAND the IMPOSSIBLE! (an excerpt) | Bill Ayers - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/09/demand-impossible-excerpt-bill-ayers.html

Big Education Ape: Demand the Impossible! (excerpt # 2) | Bill Ayers - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/09/demand-impossible-excerpt-2-bill-ayers.html

Big Education Ape: Demand the Impossible! (excerpt 3) | Bill Ayers - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/09/demand-impossible-excerpt-3-bill-ayers.html

Surprise! CT Legislature decides to function in the dark - Wait What?

Surprise!  CT Legislature decides to function in the dark - Wait What?:

Surprise!  CT Legislature decides to function in the dark

As the former House Chair of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Program Review and Investigation Committee, I’ve waited with baited breath as Connecticut’s legislative leaders’ contemplated ways to trim their generous legislative branch budget.

One option facing the Democratic-controlled Legislative Management Committee was to reduce the number of partisan, political staff that serve as the part-time legislator’s year-around aides.

Alternatively, legislative leaders announced that would have to consider taking the unprecedented and illogical step of eliminating the professional staff who work for the critically important Program Review and Investigation Committee, the primary entity that allows the legislature to investigate and oversee Executive Branch programs.

What, oh what, would legislative leaders do faced with such a “difficult” decision?

Should they take a small step that might reduce their power of incumbency or decide it is better to simply fly blind when it comes to the Legislative Branch’s oversight function.

With the stark headline, CT legislature’s chief investigative panel to lose all staff, the CT Mirror is now reporting the recent decision made by the legislative leaders.

CT Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf explains,

State legislative leaders have eliminated the General Assembly’s chief investigative arm, reassigning most of the Program Review and Investigations Committee’s 11-member staff to other duties in coming months.

The committee was established 44 years ago over the veto of then-Gov. Thomas Meskill.

The moves cap months of negotiations over the program review office 

Surprise!  CT Legislature decides to function in the dark - Wait What?:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trib's latest anti-union editorial is laughable

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trib's latest anti-union editorial is laughable:

 Trib's latest anti-union editorial is laughable

The Tribune's wingnut editors are on a roll this week. They began with a call for a "schoolchildren's Bill of Rights" which had nothing to do with either children or rights, but was little more than a right-wing school  privatization manifesto. 

Now the Trib's editorial board, juiced up on  anti-union Trumpomania, has outdone itsMussolini-loving self with a new diatribe against the CTU. The union's crime?  Holding an open strike vote by its members.

This is actually the second strike vote the union has taken. Nearly 90% of all voting members voted in December to authorize a possible strike, but CPS contested the timing of that vote.

The Trib's screed, comparing the vote, mandated by a state law which the Trib supported, with elections in Iraq, Liberia and North Korea, is laughable. To put it bluntly, the Tribune has problems with elections, period.

Brother Fred notes:

 It was just a few years ago that Stand For Children’s Jonah Edelman, a guy who thought he was way too clever by half, got the Illinois legislature to pass a law requiring Chicago union teachers, and only Chicago union teachers, to vote by a 75% super majority in order to authorize a strike.

He told his friends that he had studied union strike authorization votes and that Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trib's latest anti-union editorial is laughable:

With A Brooklyn Accent: My Problems With "White Privilege Discourse" - Part 2

With A Brooklyn Accent: My Problems With "White Privilege Discourse" - Part 2:

My Problems With "White Privilege Discourse" - Part 2

In challenging racism, even in ways that get in people's faces, I usually avoid the use of the term "white privilege". Here is why

Addressing "whites" as privileged not only erases vast differences in their economic status, including the downward mobility and hardship many have been experiencing in the last 20 years, it fails to account for the trauma that many carry in their personal histories that still haunt their imaginations. US whites are the descendants of many groups, whether Appalachian "hillbillies", or Jewish, Irish, Italian and Slavic immigrants, who not only had a harsh path to escaping poverty, but have historic memories of starvation, disease and persecution, in some cases in the US, in other cases in their countries of origin. And while an objective observer may see that most now have significant advantages over their African American counterparts in wealth, income, and personal security, traumatic memories still haunt their imaginations in ways that make them feel anything but secure. Trying to erase these experiences and memories by presuming they are irrational virtually assures that the person you are addressing will not hear you, or regard your intervention as hostile or insensitive. And since you want to win some of these people over to fight for the rights of
Black people, or others under duress, you end up making enemies where you could have recruited friends and allies"

Some of you will write off these reflections as coming from one of the most privileged people in the country, someone who is With A Brooklyn Accent: My Problems With "White Privilege Discourse" - Part 2:

Jersey Jazzman: Massachusetts Charter Schools and Their Problems With "Attrition"

Jersey Jazzman: Massachusetts Charter Schools and Their Problems With "Attrition":

Massachusetts Charter Schools and Their Problems With "Attrition"

The debate about lifting the Massachusetts charter school cap continues to rage on, in anticipation of November's vote on Question 2:

Question 2 on the November ballot will ask voters if they support giving Massachusetts the authority to lift the cap on charter schools. As it stands, no more than 120 charter schools are allowed to operate in the state; there are currently 78 active charters.

A "Yes" vote on Question 2 would give the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education the authority to lift the cap, allowing up to 12 new charter schools or expansions of existing charters each year.

Priority would be given to charters that open in lower-performing districts. New charters and charter expansions approved under this law would be exempt from existing limits on the number of charter schools, the number of students enrolled in them and the amount of local school districts' spending allocated to them.

Pro-charter researchers have been weighing in. I'll get to their arguments in due time, but for now, I want to concentrate on a key issue in the charter cap debate: attrition.

Determining whether attrition affects charter school results is central to the argument for (or against) their expansion in Massachusetts and elsewhere. If charter schools shed kids year after year -- especially if those kids are low-performing -- then their vaunted performance advantages are in question, particularly when compared to public district schools that aren't losing students.

The Massachusetts charter sector has been pushing back hard on this point. Here, for example, are the "facts" from the Massachusetts Charter Public* School Association:

ATTRITION RATES

The attrition rate in Boston and in Gateway City charters “has remained lower” than the attrition rates of district schools in those communities, according to data by (DESE) in Dec. 2015 (2014-2015 school year).

The attrition rate at Boston charters (9.3%) is significantly lower thanJersey Jazzman: Massachusetts Charter Schools and Their Problems With "Attrition":

Gulen-affiliated charter schools are bad apples? – Cloaking Inequity

Gulen-affiliated charter schools are bad apples? – Cloaking Inequity:

Gulen-affiliated charter schools are bad apples?

The Gulen-affiliated charter schools are finally getting the negative attention they deserve from law enforcement, the media and others. The Gulen-affiliated charter schools are the second largest charter chain in the United States, second only to the KIPP network of charter schools. If you want to understand depth, breadth and shocking nature of the alleged malfeasance against Gulen-affiliated charter schools, check out the film Killing Ed. According to the film, the Gulen-affiliated charter schools are some of the worst the proverbial bad apples in the charter sector.

What is really disconcerting about charter schools is that they stick together like glue. They use their charter lobbying associations in California, Texas and elsewhere to fervently protect these bad apples regardless of alleged illegal activity.

This came today from the Arnold public relations firm.

Texas is not the only state where Gulen-affiliated charter schools are under investigation by state or federal agencies for misuse of public funds.  In Texas, the Harmony Schools are part of the Gulen network.  In other states, Gulen-affiliated schools go by different names. Here’s a quick summary of just some of the investigations that raise serious concerns about how these schools are spending taxpayer dollars.  The patterns in each of these states, including Texas, are remarkably similar.

OHIO, ILLINOIS, AND INDIANA – FBI RAIDS CONCEPT SCHOOLS

• The FBI raided the headquarters of Concept Schools and 18 sites in three states in 2014 as part of an ongoing investigation into a “white-collar-crime matter” in which Concept Schools is accused of defrauding the federal government by violating competitive bidding rules related to a federally funded program for low-income students (E-RATE program).
• Court documents released in 2015 show that Concept is suspected of funneling over $5 million in federal funds to insider vendors through a rigged bidding process.
• The whistle-blower who provided documents to the FBI stated that Concept has routinely used taxpayer money to hire contractors who are involved in Gulen’s worldwide movement.

For more information:

http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/the-watchdogs-charter-firm-suspected-of-cheating-federal-grant-program/

NEW YORK – STATE COMPTROLLER FINDS INSIDER REAL ESTATE TRANSACTION

• The New York State Comptroller audited the Buffalo Academy of Science in 2013 and found that the School had leased a building from an unlikely company with little real estate experience.
• The company that leased the building to the school, Apple Educational Services, is a Turkish-run business with ties to other Turkish vendors and organizations.
• The audit included the following findings: The lease agreement would pay the owners $4.4 million more than their cost- a 200% return on investment – and benefited the owners more than the school.

The process used to select the lessor was not transparent and did not Gulen-affiliated charter schools are bad apples? – Cloaking Inequity:

Tax Cuts Deliver Higher College Tuition, Fail to Grow the Overall Economy | janresseger

Tax Cuts Deliver Higher College Tuition, Fail to Grow the Overall Economy | janresseger:

Tax Cuts Deliver Higher College Tuition, Fail to Grow the Overall Economy

I suppose you have noticed that substantive discussion of our nation’s problems has fallen by the way in this year’s election season. At best candidates are selling reform proposals without explaining exactly how such plans could be realized and precisely how they would address very real problems. Everybody seems to believe in free tuition at public colleges and universities, for example, but there are few clear answers about why college costs have skyrocketed in recent years and where the money to underwrite free tuition would come from.

Despite that historically our society has affirmed the role of public institutions paid for by taxes for ensuring essential services and protecting the good of the wider community, and despite that we have traditionally believed that the tax code should be progressive with the heaviest burden on those with the greatest financial means, an anti-tax climate now dominates our politics. Funding for essential state services—social services for the poor, public K-12 education, and in recent years state colleges and universities—has fallen by the way.  Doug Webber, an economist at Temple University, one of Pennsylvania’s public universities, explains: “It’s tempting to blame Temple’s shiny buildings and new administrators for the big increase in tuition. But there’s another, much more important reason for the rising costs.” Since 2000, “Pennsylvania’s state government (has) cut its per-student appropriations by $6,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. The rapid increase in the cost of college in recent decades—and the associated explosion in student debt, which now totals nearly $1.3 trillion nationally—is all too familiar to many Americans. But few understand what has caused the tuition boom, particularly at the public institutions that enroll roughly two-thirds of all students at four-year colleges. Many commenters, particularly in the popular press, focus on ballooning administrative budgets and extravagant student amenities…. but by far the biggest driver of rising tuitions for public colleges has been declining state funding for higher education.”

Webber examines the facts: “At most, about a quarter of the increase in college tuition since 2000 can be attributed to rising faculty salaries, improved amenities and administrative bloat.  By comparison, the decline in state support accounts for about three-quarters of the rising cost of college… (I)f Pennsylvania restored funding for higher education to its 2000 levels, Pennsylvania’s public research institutions could reduce tuition by nearly $4,000 per year without altering their budgets.  For students, the impact could be even greater once loan fees and interest were taken into account… If funding had held steady, universities could have Tax Cuts Deliver Higher College Tuition, Fail to Grow the Overall Economy | janresseger: