The NRA, a Tax-Exempt Loaded with Private Interest - The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

The NRA, a Tax-Exempt Loaded with Private Interest - The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:

The NRA, a Tax-Exempt Loaded with Private Interest

National Rifle Assn: Summary | OpenSecrets - https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=d000000082

Independent Expenditures: $52,582,309
     For Democrats: $265
     Against Democrats: $37,010,516
     For Republicans: $17,385,437
     Against Republicans: $2,281
Electioneering Communications: $0
Communication Costs: $1,816,249

[The following is a guest blog post by Alexandra F. O’Neill, Esq. and Daniel P. O’Neill, CFA]

Introduction[1]

Many have written about the NRA’s (National Rifle Association of America) close ties with the firearms and ammunition industry.[2]  People have not sufficiently examined whether these ties should impact the tax-exempt status of the organization, however.[3]  The NRA, a tax-exempt social welfare organization under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”), does not pay taxes on any of its net income.  In addition, under the rules governing section 501(c)(4) organizations, it need not disclose its significant contributors to the public.  This article examines the NRA’s activities and its finances in the context of the law governing tax-exempt social welfare organizations.  The authors conclude that the majority of the NRA’s lobbying, education, training and publication activities operate to benefit a private interest: the firearms and ammunition industry.  As a result, under the cases and rulings interpreting section 501(c)(4), the NRA does not primarily serve the community interest and should not qualify as a tax-exempt social welfare organization.  Instead, the NRA should operate as a political lobbying organization to be accountable for its key interests: the firearms and ammunition industry.

NRA Activities

Chartered in 1871, according to the NRA’s website, the organization’s primary goal was to “promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis.” [4]  The NRA today describes its mission as “to protect and defend the US Constitution; to promote public safety, law and order, and the national defense; to train law enforcement agencies; to train civilians in marksmanship; to promote shooting sports and hunting.”[5]  According to its 2014 IRS Form 990, the NRA spent the majority of its resources on three main program services that serve the organization’s tax-exempt purpose: (1) $54.5 million on firearms education, safety, and marksmanship training; (2) $47.1 million on NRA-ILA legislative program services; and (3) $39.5 million on NRA membership communications. [6]

The NRA describes its firearms education, safety, and marksmanship training as “NRA training courses develop safe and responsible shooters through a network of certified instructors, training more people annually than any other organization.”[7]  In the same paragraph, the NRA notes that it “is the world’s leader in firearms education, safety, and marksmanship training” and that “The NRA also engages gun owners in programs that promote all aspects of the outdoor lifestyle including hunting programs, shooting range programs, women’s programs, youth programs, competitive shooting programs, law enforcement training programs, gunsmithing programs, trainings and opportunities to shoot, hunt, and enjoy the outdoor traditions.”[8]  On its website, the NRA provides some examples of its educational, training and competitive programs.  The organization notes it has one million youth participating in NRA shooting sports events and affiliated programs with groups, such as 4-H, the Boy Scouts of America and the American Legion.[9]  It hosts the National Matches at its shooting range in Ohio, where individuals participate in various shooting competitions.[10]  The NRA offers hunter education programs and a NRA Police Firearms Instructor certification program.  In addition, the organization certifies instructors to train gun owners in different firearms courses.  Further, it has established the Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program to educate children on what to do if they see a firearm in an unsupervised situation.  Finally, the NRA also offers “Refuse To Be A Victim®” seminars to men and women.[11]

The NRA’s audited financial statements show that the organization spends little on the competitive, recreational and training programs described on the NRA’s website and highlighted in its tax filings.  According to its 2014 audited financials,[12] the The NRA, a Tax-Exempt Loaded with Private Interest - The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:

A national teachers’ strike? | Michigan Radio - http://michiganradio.org/node/34720

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

After the slaughter of students and staff in Parkland, Florida, the time for action has never been more urgent. The politicians sit on their hands as our children and their teachers are murdered in their schools. We will be silent no more! The failure to enact rational laws that bar access to guns designed for mass shootings is inexcusable. It is past time to speak out and act.

Pledge your support to stop gun violence here.

We call for mass action on April 20, the anniversary of the horrific shootings at Columbine High School. We urge teachers, families, students, administrators and every member of the community to engage in acts of protest in and around their schools. Create actions that work best in your community.  Organize sit-ins, teach-ins, walkouts, marches–whatever you decide will show your school and community’s determination to keep our students safe. One elementary teacher suggested that teachers and parents link arms around the school to show their determination to protect children.

It is time to let our legislators know that they must stand up to the gun lobby and enact meaningful reform to protect students and staff.

Advocacy groups including the AFT, NEA and the BATS have already pledged their support.

We are asking you to take the pledge now and join us on April 20. Be a leader in your own community and develop meaningful activities that show that you stand for safe and peaceful schools. Share your ideas with us.

Sign up here, and then post this link: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/national-day-of-action-against-gun-violence-in-schools.

Sign up your families. Sign up your friends. There can be no excuse for inaction.

Thank you for all that you do.

Diane Ravitch,President of the Network for Public Education

Carol Burris Executive Director

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

Next steps for the Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

Next steps for the April 20th Day of Action

Next steps for the April 20th Day of Action - Network For Public Education 

Thank you so much for pledging to take action against gun violence in schools on April 20.

This is what we need you to do.

Click here to tell us what your action will be on that day. By sharing, you will inspire others to act.

The Network for Public Education is now part of a larger coalition of organizations that includes teacher, superintendent and advocacy groups who are planning actions on April 20. You can find that coalition at Protectourschools.com.

What kinds of actions might you pledge? Promise that everyone in your family will wear orange that day, or that your local teachers’ association will organize a candlelight vigil. A middle school teacher might teach students what to do if they hear someone talking about violence, or see someone making threats on social media. A principal might organize an assembly with their student council, bringing in local policymakers to express their concerns. Parent groups might encircle the school, linking arms to symbolize protection. Your business or office might commit to wearing orange.

We have other ideas listed on the NPE website which you can find here.

What is important is that (1) you and others commit to an action and (2) you tell us about it using the form.

Thank you for your commitment to this important issue. We will continue to communicate with you and update our website with additional information as the day approaches.

If you have not taken our poll yet on solutions to gun violence, you can do so here.

We will soon have a link where you can buy an orange t shirt to wear. We will be back in touch soon.

Thank you for all that you do.

Please share this email on social media. Here is a link: https://wp.me/p3bR9v-2FT

Diane Ravitch President of the Network for Public Education

Carol Burris Executive Director

Next steps for the April 20th Day of Action - Network For Public Education 

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

After the slaughter of students and staff in Parkland, Florida, the time for action has never been more urgent. The politicians sit on their hands as our children and their teachers are murdered in their schools. We will be silent no more! The failure to enact rational laws that bar access to guns designed for mass shootings is inexcusable. It is past time to speak out and act.

Pledge your support to stop gun violence here.

We call for mass action on April 20, the anniversary of the horrific shootings at Columbine High School. We urge teachers, families, students, administrators and every member of the community to engage in acts of protest in and around their schools. Create actions that work best in your community.  Organize sit-ins, teach-ins, walkouts, marches–whatever you decide will show your school and community’s determination to keep our students safe. One elementary teacher suggested that teachers and parents link arms around the school to show their determination to protect children.

It is time to let our legislators know that they must stand up to the gun lobby and enact meaningful reform to protect students and staff.

Advocacy groups including the AFT, NEA and the BATS have already pledged their support.

We are asking you to take the pledge now and join us on April 20. Be a leader in your own community and develop meaningful activities that show that you stand for safe and peaceful schools. Share your ideas with us.

Sign up here, and then post this link: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/national-day-of-action-against-gun-violence-in-schools.

Sign up your families. Sign up your friends. There can be no excuse for inaction.

Thank you for all that you do.

Diane Ravitch,President of the Network for Public Education

Carol Burris Executive Director

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

Join us in a Day of Action to Stop Gun Violence in our Schools - Network For Public Education:

The Education of Bill Gates | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch

The Education of Bill Gates | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch:

The Education of Bill Gates

Bill Gates made billions and billions of dollars in the field of computer technology, helping to transform the world in the process. He's an innovator. He's a disrupter. He's the savviest of savvy businessmen. He's been successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams of success or avarice.

So Gates thought, why not put his entrepreneurial genius and hundreds of millions of dollars a year to work innovating and disrupting and transforming the field of education? How hard can it be?

Pretty hard, he discovered.

Gates has been pouring money into his educational experiments in this country since 2000. Overall, I'd give his efforts a grade of C. Not much help, no grave harm. I'd give what he's learned about education a B. He now understands he doesn't know as much about education as he thought he did.

Bill and Melinda Gates released their annual letter answering The 10 Toughest Questions We Get. Question #2 is, "What do you have to show for the billions you’ve spent on U.S. education?" Their answer employs the couple's usual upbeat tone, but the efforts they describe are less than encouraging, especially given that, "Our foundation spends about $500 million a year in the United States, most of it on education."

A few telling excerpts from their answer:

"One thing we learned is that it’s extremely hard to transform low-performing schools."

"We have also worked with districts across the country to help them improve the quality of teaching. . . . But we haven’t seen the large impact we had hoped for."

"How did our teacher effectiveness work do on these three tests? Its effect on students’ learning was mixed."

Some progressive educators question Gates' motives. I don't, or not as much as others do, anyway. I don't think Gates has a political agenda along the line of, say, the Walton family or the Koch brothers or the DeVoses. I believe Gates honestly wants to improve the country's education system, without a whole lot of preconceived, ideological notions about what that means. That's The Education of Bill Gates | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch:




The Education of Bill Gates | The Range: The Tucson Weekly's Daily Dispatch:

We Fought for our Education #MeTooK12 #MeToo #TimesUp

Not in Our School! http://bit.ly/2gelE2S
We Fought for our Education

My name is Charlotte Smalls and I am a Clinical Director in the juvenile justice field. My sister was harassed for almost two years by a star athlete at our Oregon high school before he raped her during a girl’s basketball game the week before Christmas vacation. My sister was terrified after her rapist threatened her life, so she reported the assault to the school. Nevertheless, the school sent her to the same lunch period with the assailant and then failed to protect her. That same day she was beaten up at school by a female friend of the rapist. Both my sister and I endured threats. We stayed out of school the rest of that week, and when we tried to return after vacation it was too dangerous to continue going to school. My sister struggled a great deal as a result of the assault. When we tried to get an education, the school’s response created a living hell. The school even retaliated against staff who tried to support our family.


No one ever mentioned our Title IX rights that were violated when the school protected the rapist, but not my sister or me. We had no alternative but to study at home. The star basketball assailant was only suspended for 2 days, even though there was forensic evidence that he raped my sister. In addition to the forensic evidence, the rapist admitted what he had done. The girl who beat up my sister was expelled. The rapist is the one who should have been expelled, and theWe Fought for our Education

 Not in Our School! http://bit.ly/2gelE2S

Video

WATCH IT NOW PART 1    PART 2	SHARE IT NOW	READ ABOUT IT	TAKE ACTION

 is an innovative video for K-12 parents, middle and high school students, schools, and community organizations. It’s about gender equality in education, students’ protections under Title IX, and much more. Video Contents  Media Reports  Excerpts on our YouTube channel.

As high school students plan for their new gender equality group, we watch them interview nationally recognized education, legal, and LGBTQ experts and learn from counselors, advocates, parents, and students. The video offers simple steps and engaging activities to make schools safer with equal learning spaces for all students.

In Part 2, a teenage victim learns about her right to privacy and mandated reporting when she speaks with a victim’s advocate.

 was created by parents who know—first hand—how important this information is for K-12 families. Share the video and Action Guide widely. Use the Presentation Guide to invite others to start the conversation!

 is free of charge. Your tax-deductible donation helps to defray production costs and enables us to produce a Spanish language version.  To make your donation, please use PayPal. Thank you!

Send us your feedback and take the online evaluation.

Take Action

• •  Action Guide
  • Campus activism: How to Become a NOW Activist in High School

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As Online Schools Expand, So Do Questions About Their Performance - WSJ

As Online Schools Expand, So Do Questions About Their Performance - WSJ:

As Online Schools Expand, So Do Questions About Their Performance
Online classrooms offer greater flexibility and freedom, but a review of more than 400 full-time virtual schools shows they deliver relatively poor performance and low graduation rates

After years of steady growth, virtual schools are experiencing a blip as some states attempt to claw back public funds, citing student inactivity online, or force schools to close due to habitual poor performance.

Virtual schools, where all classes are online and old-fashioned classrooms don’t exist, had full-time student enrollment of about 300,000 last school year, or less than 1% of the nation’s nearly 51 million public-school students, according to a Wall Street Journal review of enrollment data. That is up from about 199,000 in the 2011-12 school year, under a tally by the National Education Policy Center.

Online charter schools, which are publicly funded but run by private entities, educate the bulk of these students. The popularity of the schools has increased substantially in the past decade, with many providing live learning sessions.

The greater flexibility and freedom offered by online classrooms can help some students thrive, including young professional athletes with busy training schedules, home-schoolers and victims of harassment. “It’s a bully-free area,” said Brenden Santos, a 12-year-old in Raleigh, N.C., who often starts his school day in his bedroom, working on a school-provided laptop. Students are typically required to take state end-of-course exams.

But a review of more than 400 full-time virtual schools in 34 states and the District of Columbia shows they deliver relatively poor performance and low graduation rates compared with public schools overall.

Those performance levels and student-participation concerns have brought virtual schools under increasing scrutiny, although some educators and researchers say not enough states are holding the schools accountable.

In Ohio, state audits found that a prominent virtual charter school, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow , or ECOT, didn’t educate as many students as the school indicated, based on logon data and offline participation information. The state demanded the school return nearly $80 million in funding and began reducing payments to the school. ECOT says the reduced payments caused its shutdown last month, leaving 12,000 students to enroll elsewhere. The school denies the allegation and is challenging the state’s methodology in the Ohio supreme court.

RELATED

• Two Families, Two Takes on Virtual Schooling (Dec. 15, 2011)
• My Teacher Is an App (Nov. 12, 2011
• Online High Schools Test Students' Social Skills (Sep. 24, 2009)

The California Department of Education has ordered California Virtual Academies network, or CAVA, to pay back about $2 million to the state, saying it improperly used state funds and citing the school for unsupported student attendance. CAVA said in a statement there was no misuse of public funds and it planned to appeal the decision.

In New Mexico, a state commission voted in December to reject a renewal application for the virtual school New Mexico Connections Academy, citing poor academic performance. An administrator at the school said it has appealed the decision. In Indiana, Hoosier As Online Schools Expand, So Do Questions About Their Performance - WSJ:

How charter schools are prolonging segregation

How charter schools are prolonging segregation:

How charter schools are prolonging segregation

Editor's Note: 

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about education in New Orleans.

Proponents of charter schools have bought into the watered down notion of inclusion

Charter schools didn’t create segregation, but the charter school movement isn’t helping to end it either.

When Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must never adjust ourselves to racial segregation,” he wasn’t suggesting that black kids need white kids and teachers in the classroom with them to learn. King was acutely aware that segregation sustains racial inequality in schools and other institutions. Education reform without an explicit attempt to dismantle the sources of inequality isn’t a moon shot toward justice; it is simply a maladjustment to injustice.

A recent Associated Press analysis of national school enrollment data found that “as of school year 2014-2015, more than 1,000 of the nation’s 6,747 charter schools had minority enrollment of at least 99 percent, and the number has been rising steadily.”

A startling number, but the charter school lobby essentially responded with a version of, “So what?”

“Academics, attorneys, and activists can hold any opinion they want about public charter schools and other families’ school choices,” said a spokesperson for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in an official response to the AP story. “In the end, parents’ and students’ How charter schools are prolonging segregation:

Andre M. Perry

David M. Rubenstein Fellow -Metropolitan Policy Program

@andreperryedu