AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

SEATTLE (AP) — Dollar for dollar, the beleaguered movement to bring charter schools to Washington state has had no bigger champion than billionaire Bill Gates.

The Microsoft co-founder gave millions of dollars to see a charter school law approved despite multiple failed ballot referendums. And his private foundation not only helped create the Washington State Charter Schools Association, but has at times contributed what amounts to an entire year’s worth of revenues for the 5-year-old charter advocacy group.

All told, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given about $25 million to the charter group that is credited with keeping the charter schools open after the state struck down the law, and then lobbying legislators to revive the privately run, publicly funded schools.

It’s an extreme example of how billionaires are influencing state education policy by giving money to state-level charter support organizations to sustain, defend and expand the charter schools movement across the country.

Since 2006, philanthropists and their private foundations and charities have given almost half a billion dollars to those groups, according to an Associated Press analysis of tax filings and Foundation Center data. The review looked at 52 groups noted by a U.S. Department of Education website as official charter school resources in the 44 states plus Washington, D.C., that currently have a charter law, as well as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Most of the money has gone to the top 15 groups, which received $425 million from philanthropy. The Walton Family Foundation, run by the heirs to the Walmart fortune, is the largest donor to the state charter advocates, giving $144 million to 27 groups.

“We ought to be paying more attention to who these organizations are, and what kind of vision they have, and what drives them. A lot of these organizations have extraordinary influence, and it’s often pretty quiet influence,” said Jon Valant, an education policy expert at Brookings.

Charters aren’t subject to the same rules or standards governing traditional public schools but are embraced by Gates and other philanthropists who see them as investments in developing better and different ways to educate those who struggle in traditional school systems, particularly children in poor, urban areas. Studies on academic success are mixed.

The charter support groups, as nonprofits, are typically forbidden from involvement in political campaigns, but the same  Continue reading: AP Analysis: Billionaires fuel powerful state charter groups

Weingarten offers ‘hope in darkness,’ urges member and election engagement | #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

Weingarten offers ‘hope in darkness,’ urges member and election engagement | American Federation of Teachers

Weingarten Offers Hope in Darkness

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Weingarten's "Hope in Darkness" Speech

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

AFT President Randi Weingarten addressed a full convention hall Friday, outlining the fight the union has before it and, more importantly, urging members to find “hope in the darkness” at a crucial juncture for American democracy and Americans’ aspirations for a better life. Convention participants followed closely, demonstrating enthusiastic and loud support with standing ovations—for the stories about how AFT members are sticking with their unions in huge numbers, and for the way our collective voice is so much stronger together. They also demonstrated strong support for better immigration policies that are pro-Dreamer, pro-Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and against migrant family separation.

Weingarten laid out a path for a strong union movement in the face of the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision and right-wing attacks—a path that depends on engaging members and involving community around issues that matter. And she sounded a dire warning for the future of American democracy in the Trump era, framing the 2018 election as a battle for decency over cruelty.          

“We are a year and a half into this presidency, and we have cause for great concern,” she said. “This state of affairs is not normal. I cannot be silent and neither can you. … Beyond demanding decency, we must defend democracy at this most crucial moment for American democracy since the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in the 1930s.”

Weingarten called for AFT members to unite with our communities in the lead-up to the November midterm elections and framed voting as the way to translate the activism we are seeing across the country into enduring change. She also noted that nearly 300 AFT members are running for elected office: They “aren’t just casting their ballots—they’re ON the ballot.”

“These elections won’t just determine whether Republicans or Democrats prevail, but whether cruelty or decency prevails,” she said. “We must be a check and balance for our democracy and for a society that is safe, welcoming and sane.”

“America’s labor movement is central to defending democracy. Authoritarian governments invariably attack unions, seeking to undermine them, because unions have always been in the forefront of the fight for democracy. … So when it comes to November 2018, we must be together and we must be all-in, which is why I am so glad that both Secretary Clinton and Sen. Sanders are with us at this convention.”

Weingarten zeroed in on the challenges and opportunities facing labor unions in the post-Janus era, amid continued threats from a right wing and an administration determined to deny workers a shot at a better life. “Right-wing groups and their wealthy allies want us gone, because unions are often the only organized force challenging their enormous power in politics and the economy,” she said. “It’s part of their trifecta strategy: suppress the vote, privatize public education and eliminate unions—the three ways working folks have any agency, any real power, in America.”

“They know that working people gain strength in numbers,” Weingarten continued. “And they know working people do better when they join together in unions. So the right wing is doing everything they can to stop us, so people have to fend for themselves.”

Weingarten juxtaposed the feeling of apprehension during the Janus oral arguments—when the conservative justices made it clear that they wanted to “destroy unions and, with them, the aspirations and dreams of working folks,” overturn 40 years of precedent, and weaponize the First Amendment—with the hope and inspiration of the teacher walkouts that launched two weeks later in West Virginia and spread across the country.

“People see that despair is not a strategy, and that—together—these fights are winnable,” she said.

Weingarten continued, “Like so much of the recent activism, the teacher walkouts are stoking a movement for social justice, for workers’ rights, for women’s rights, for civil rights and children’s rights, for decent healthcare and well-funded public schools, for safety—on the streets and in our schools. People acting together and accomplishing together what individuals can’t do on their own.”

And she noted that the Janus decision, which its wealthy funders hoped would encourage members to “drop” the union, has in fact galvanized members to join and recommit to the AFT in record numbers. “Where our opponents have waged their bare-knuckle opt-out campaigns, the stories of drops have been few and far between. We have seen just the opposite: members recommitting and new members joining.”

More than 530,000 AFT members have recommitted to the union, and the AFT has reached its highest membership ever at 1,755,000 members.

But that’s not stopping right-wing groups from targeting union members, she said, noting that in the days since the Janusdecision, “right-wing billionaires have spent millions, literally millions, on opt-out campaigns and lawsuits. The Mackinac Center, for example, with funding from the Koch brothers and Betsy DeVos, is spamming every educator in nearly a dozen states on their school email accounts.”

Weingarten said the way forward for unions in the face of these attacks is to engage members and involve community around issues that matter—safe communities and welcoming, well-funded public schools; affordable healthcare and higher education; good wages, a secure retirement, and a voice at work and in our democracy; decency and fairness, and fighting hatred and bigotry; and fighting for family values and a better America.

Concluding with a call to action to keep caring, fighting, showing up and voting, Weingarten said, “We are in a battle for the soul of our nation. It’s terrifying, but we have confronted dreadful times before. … But I come down on the side of hope.”

“America can and does change,” she continued. “Power concedes nothing without a demand, as Frederick Douglass taught us, and we have been fighting powerful forces for centuries. ... The arc of the universe does bend toward justice—but not on its own. It bends because people like you and me put our hands on it and bend it. So now it’s our turn. This is on us. This is our moment.”

Read the full speech here. 

[Virginia Myers; photos by Michael Campbell and Elliot Cramer]

Weingarten offers ‘hope in darkness,’ urges member and election engagement | American Federation of Teachers

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling | #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

One of them delivered a rousing, sermon-like call to action. Another cracked a series of jokes and performed an acoustic rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid,” with the familiar line “I’m sticking to the union.” Another put the current hardships into the context of labor history and promised to organize more workers.

The three national union presidents took the stage together Saturday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, to address the American Federation of Teachers convention — and to show 3,000 educators, nurses and health professionals that organized labor stands prepared to stick together following an historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that could dramatically undercut union budgets. 

“It is so important that you see us all four standing together as one,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. 

“Our four great unions enjoy indestructible bonds of solidarity,” Mr. Saunders said, his voice rising to a crescendo. “There is no daylight between us, not even an inch. And that’s never been more important than it is now.” Continue reading: Defiant national union presidents gathered in Pittsburgh speak of unity following Janus ruling | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Big Education Ape: AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/07/aft-convention-2018-live-stream.html

Hillary Clinton to teachers union conference: Keep up fight | National News | citizentribune.com - https://www.citizentribune.com/news/national/hillary-clinton-to-teachers-union-conference-keep-up-fight/image_b994abcb-9faa-5d5e-b1c0-75f877cba36f.html on @CitizenTribune

Thousands March Through Pittsburgh To Call For Public School Funding « CBS Pittsburgh - https://cbsloc.al/2KZr5nz on /KDKA

'Nevertheless, we persist.' Elizabeth Warren backs unions during Pittsburgh stop at teachers' convention | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - http://www.post-gazette.com/local/region/2018/07/14/Elizabeth-Warren-Pittsburgh-teachers-convention-janus-unions/stories/201807140070 via @PittsburghPG

Big Education Ape: AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/07/aft-convention-2018-live-stream.html

The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education - Progressive.org #AFT2018 #RedForEd

The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education - Progressive.org

The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education

The nation's eyes are on my home state of North Carolina, where what many are calling a coup has shown the lengths to which Republicans will go to protect and expand their political power.

The naked power grab by Republicans has shocked the nation. But few people really understand that a struggle over public education is at the center of the fight against an authoritarian government in the era of Donald Trump.

What did Republicans do? In a nutshell, according to a review of the carnage by David Graham for The Atlantic, "Having lost the governor’s seat in November’s election, the GOP legislature opted to simply reduce the governor’s power drastically. The two most prominent bills involve the elections system and the governor’s right to make appointments."

Specifically, on the elections front, Republicans robbed incoming Democratic Governor Roy Cooper of his ability to change the composition of state and county boards of elections, diluted the governor's appointment authority, and rigged the timing of county board leadership to favor Republicans.

Republican lawmakers took away the incoming governor’s ability to make appointments to the State Board of Education and the boards of trustees of University of North Carolina system, made cabinet appointees subject to approval by the senate, and cut the number of appointments the governor can make for government jobs from 1,500 to 425.

The attack on the incoming governor's power over education appointments is especially radical, as it transfers power from the state board to the new state superintendent of public instruction, Republican Mark Johnson, who defeated the Democratic incumbent, June Atkinson, in November.

Why go after education offices?

In North Carolina, public education has always been an issue inextricably intertwined with voting rights and democracy. To learn more about this I talked with historian Timothy Tyson at one of his favorite haunts in downtown Durham, a combination coffee shop, casual eatery, and general store with Continue reading: The Carolina Coup and the Fight for Public Education - Progressive.org

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

On the evening of February 1, Tina Adams peered out the window of her hotel room in Charleston, West Virginia. It had been snowing for hours, and the roads were freezing over. Earlier in the day, she had driven two hours north from coal country to set the stage for a protest at the state Capitol.

Adams, a middle school teacher and mother of six, was furious. After 15 years at Baileysville Elementary and Middle School, in Brenton, she made about $47,000 a year—$12,000 less than the national average. Like many of her fellow teachers, she sometimes worked nights and weekends to boost her income; for extra pay, she offered private tutoring for students who had discipline problems or developmental disabilities.

It wasn’t always enough, and Adams had begun thinking about selling her beloved Harley-­Davidson Sportster to help her daughter buy a car. It was not the kind of life she envisioned when she launched her teaching career. And now, the state’s governor, Jim Justice, was reneging on a long-promised pay raise and hiking health insurance premiums. Officials even wanted teachers to download a smartphone app to track their daily steps or face a financial penalty. As the president of her local union, Adams pushed for a walkout. “It’s like all of us teachers had been pushed to the side and forgotten about,” she tells me. “We finally reached a point where we were fed up.”

And yet, as the snow fell in Charleston that night, Adams worried. She had organized her school’s field trips and class dances—nothing like this. What if no one showed up? Her home in the southern part of the state had been an old union stronghold, yet West Virginia was now Trump country. Teachers hadn’t taken any Continue reading: ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It!’: Can Trump Country Withstand the Grassroots Teachers Movement Sweeping the Nation?

AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers #AFT2018 #RedForEd #IamAFT @aft @AFSCME @NEAToday @SEIU

AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers

AFT Convention 2018 live stream

View All AFT Convention 2018 Videos HERE

Monday AM Session

Sunday PM Session

Sunday AM Session

Saturday PM Session

Saturday AM Session Part 2

Saturday AM Session Part 1

Hillary Rodham Clinton Receives AFT Women's Rights Award

AFT Convention 2018 Friday AM Session

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AFT Convention 2018 live stream | American Federation of Teachers

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School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

Privatization Report Card - Network For Public Education - https://wp.me/P3bR9v-2IA via @Network4pubEd

School funding: Do charter schools or district schools get more money?

NAACP president tackles charter school question - POLITICO

NAACP president tackles charter school question - POLITICO

NAACP president tackles charter school question
Charter schools have been embraced not just by Republicans but by some Democrats as well.

Derrick Johnson’s comments stemmed from the NAACP's passage of a resolution in 2016 at its national convention that called for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools until there was more accountability and transparency in their operations. | Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

NAACP President Derrick Johnson says that his organization does not oppose charter schools — even though one of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights groups continues to find many of the schools' practices troubling.

With charter schools, “people only want to highlight successes and never want to talk about the failures. With the NAACP, we want to eradicate the failures because our future is at stake, particularly African-American children and especially African-American males," said Johnson, in an interview with POLITICO.

His comments stemmed from the NAACP's passage of a resolution in 2016 at its national convention that called for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools until there was more accountability and transparency in their operations. The vote showcased the divide among Democrats and the civil rights community over whether the schools are a viable alternative to traditional public schools.

The move was also surprising, in part, because charter schools are popular among many African-American families — more than 800,000 black students attended charter schools in the 2016-2017 school year.

Charters have been embraced not just by Republicans like President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but by many Democrats as well as a choice option for families who want out of failing schools. Charters use public funds, but are run outside the confines of many of the rules that apply to traditional public schools.

Johnson said the convention delegates brought forward the issue because they were seeing problems in their communities, particularly among for-profit operators. Continue reading: NAACP president tackles charter school question - POLITICO

YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds | EdSurge News

YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds | EdSurge News

YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds

When a scholar did a YouTube search for the term “public education” recently, the results painted a bleak picture of the nation’s schools and state colleges.

Among the top results: a slick animated video called “Problems in Public Education,” a rant arguing that all public education “kills creativity,” and a video essay titled “public ‘education’ has become indoctrination and distraction.” And that was just on the first page.

The researcher in question, Burhanettin Keskin, happens to be an education professor at the University of Mississippi, and so he decided to do an analysis of how public education is portrayed on YouTube.

His study, published in the peer-reviewed journal SAGE Open earlier this year, formalized what he had found in that initial search: that the majority of videos on the first few pages of searches for “public education” painted a negative view of the subject. “A substantial amount of these videos contained blunt attacks on public education,” Keskin writes in the paper.

The professor believes that YouTube’s search algorithm is favoring extreme views against education. And that, he worries, could be influencing internet users around the globe. As he concludes in the paper: “The severe negativity of such videos continues to pose barriers for teachers and public education overall.”

Keskin himself is a proponent, and a product, of public education. To avoid bias in his research, he had an independent coder rate the videos. And he made sure the YouTube searches were done without logging into a specific YouTube account and with a web browser whose history had been cleared.

The researcher notes that the exact nature of how YouTube’s algorithm works is a mystery, since Google, which owns YouTube, considers its workings a trade secret. It is also constantly changing, and results will likely vary for each user once they are logged in. But many of the videos that emerged in the professor’s research are clearly popular, with many of them attracting hundreds of thousands of views.

In an interview this week, Keskin notes that one of his goals is to call attention to how tech giants may be skewing the debate about all kinds of public-policy issues, including education.

“These big companies like Google—whether they know it or not—they shape and have an impact on the social construction of reality,” he says. “People say ‘it’s coding’ or ‘the algorithm does it,’ but it’s a not a neutral act.”

Others have raised similar questions about search algorithms. In a 2017 TED talk, “technosociologist” Zeynep Tufekci described her experience on YouTube, which she noticed was recommending increasingly extreme videos to her as she did her political-science research. As she watched videos of Trump rallies to write about them, for instance, suggestions on Continue reading: YouTube Searches Favor Videos That Attack Public Education, Scholar Finds | EdSurge News

Arne Duncan's Unlearned Lessons: Review of "How Schools Work" by Arne Duncan - As reviewed by Frederick M. Hess

Arne Duncan's Unlearned Lessons: Review of "How Schools Work" by Arne Duncan - Education Next : Education Next
Arne Duncan’s Unlearned Lessons
A window into why the left-right school-reform coalition unraveled

How Schools Work:
An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education
by Arne Duncan
Simon & Schuster, 2018, $26.99; 256 pages.

As reviewed by Frederick M. Hess

When Arne Duncan was named the ninth U.S. secretary of education in early 2009, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) had shown a decade of substantial growth, efforts to launch the Common Core and reform teacher evaluation were getting under way with ample support and little opposition, and education seemed a bipartisan bright spot in an increasingly polarized political climate.

Seven years later, when Duncan stepped down, NAEP scores had stagnated, the Common Core was a poisoned brand, research on new teacher-evaluation systems painted a picture of failure, and it was hard to find anyone who would still argue that education reform was a bipartisan cause. It would be ludicrous to say any of this was Duncan’s “fault,” but it’s fair to say that his self-certitude, expansive view of his office’s role, and impatience with his critics helped bring the great school-reform crackup to pass.

Now, Duncan has written a book about his years in education. It could have been a meditation on why things went awry, what he’s learned, and how all this should inform school improvement in the years ahead. That would have been a book well worth reading. Or Duncan might have really taken on the skeptics, answering their strongest criticisms and explaining why the path he chose was the best way forward. Instead, Duncan has opted to pen a breezy exercise in straw men and self-congratulation, while taking credit for “chang[ing] the education landscape in America.” The narrative follows Duncan from his time as a Chicago schools central-office staffer, to his tenure as superintendent in Chicago, to his service in Washington during the early years of President Barack Obama’s first term (skipping the second half of Duncan’s time in Washington), before closing with his thoughts on gun violence and an eight-point education agenda.

Throughout, Duncan comes across as a nice, extraordinarily confident guy who really likes basketball and has no doubts about how to fix schools or second thoughts about his time in Washington. And readers will be enamored with his mother and role model, Sue Duncan, who is omnipresent in Duncan’s tale. Indeed, the book exudes an earnest Leave It to Beaver charm, including Duncan’s repeated insistence that employees should just “call me Arne.” He shares touching profiles of schools and educators and moving accounts of his experiences with the families of students killed by gun violence. He shows admirable verve in describing his success working with a Chicago school system lawyer to find a contractual workaround to make an afterschool program logistically feasible, and his later willingness, as superintendent, to give “Freakonomics” researcher Steven Levitt access to the city’s test data in order to flag teacher cheating.

For all that, much of the volume reads more like campaign literature than the exercise in straight talk that he promises. Duncan calls for doubling or tripling the amount America spends on education, avers that “the vast majority of teachers are heroes who are defying the odds,” and courageously insists that—no what matter what others say—“[w]e must believe in free, high-quality public education.”

When it comes to more substantive questions, Duncan suffers from the tendency to divide the world into those who are “for the kids” and those who are not. He writes that, as a young Chicago Public Schools official, “I didn’t feel beholden to the office I worked for but instead to kids first.” When he agreed to serve as secretary of education, he reports, President-elect Obama told him, “Just do what you think is right for kids and let me worry about the politics.” Duncan relates a personal call with new Ohio governor John Kasich, during which Duncan tells Kasich, “I’m here for you, to help your kids. . . . [B]elieve me when I say that I have zero interest in politics.”

In Duncan’s telling, he has spent a career facing off against those who didn’t share his commitment to the kids, battling the “vested interests that are resistant to change and absolutely beholden to the status quo.” While he Continue reading: Arne Duncan's Unlearned Lessons: Review of "How Schools Work" by Arne Duncan - Education Next : Education Next