Schools Matter: PROFITS! Why Ref Rodriguez and his CCSA covet the LAUSD Board Seat

Schools Matter: PROFITS! Why Ref Rodriguez and his CCSA covet the LAUSD Board Seat:

PROFITS! Why Ref Rodriguez and his CCSA covet the LAUSD Board Seat

“The education industry represents, in our opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public control... represents the largest market opportunity... the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada.” — Montgomery Securities prospectus quoted in Jonathan Kozol’s The Big Enchilada

Most of the time the charter school industry's corporate leadership is able to craft their messaging so as to distract the populace from the real purposes undergirding their project. Occasionally, someone in their sector goes off script and tells the truth about what chartering is all about. Usually it's those in the sphere of finance capital—gleefully celebrating how lucrative the charter school industry has been for them. The Forbes piece, Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express To Fat City , is an excellent example of this. Sometimes individuals in the neoliberal corporate education reform camp spill the proverbial beans. Industry proselytizers like Andy Smarick and Paul Vallas have been candidly honest about charters discriminating against Students with Disabilities (SWD), and charters eschewing veteran teachers, respectively. Revelations of the dark secrets behind the charter industry's insatiable drive for profits also shine cleansing light on a current local issue—namely the attempts of charter industry profiteer Refugio "Ref" Rodriguez, and his California Charter Schools Association's (CCSA) campaign to capture the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education seat for District 5. One of Rodriguez's fellow CCSA profiteers inadvertently provided incontrovertible evidence of why the school privatization camp spent over three quarters of a million dollars in the primary election alone.

A Twitter follow from a name I recognized as a marginal player in the corporate education reform camp sparked curiosity. A moment spent checking their LinkedIn profile yielded a veritable gold mine of information unequivocally proving the charter industry's, and particularly CCSA's, drive for profits comes at the expense of children and community. The prose from their profile says it all:

Co-Founder/VP - School Services & Products
California Charter Schools Association
July 2003 – July 2007 (4 years 1 month)
Launched and operated association services and products division providing financial, insurance, special education, and other member services that broke-even the first year and generated 30% profit margins in subsequent years--with 20-30% lead generation and 20-50% close ratios.

Profit margins, lead generation, and close ratios… refreshing honesty from an industry that claims it "puts kids first."

Like the hedge fund managers discussed in the Forbes piece above, platitudes about helping kids are quickly subsumed by talk of plentiful profits, revenues, and business opportunities when charter school executives talk among themselves. This focus on profits drives Ref Rodriguez's CCSA charter school industry trade association to eliminate any political opposition, and also explains their unhinged viciousness and ruthlessness towards the Honorable Bennett Kayser, our sitting LAUSD Board Schools Matter: PROFITS! Why Ref Rodriguez and his CCSA covet the LAUSD Board Seat:

Eleven Atlanta Educators Have Been Convicted for Cheating Conspiracy, Revealing the Dangers of Standardized Testing — The Atlantic

Eleven Atlanta Educators Have Been Convicted for Cheating Conspiracy, Revealing the Dangers of Standardized Testing — The Atlantic:

When Teachers Cheat

Rampant conspiracies to alter kids' scores, including the one that resulted in the recent conviction of 11 Atlanta educators, attest to the dangers of high-stakes testing.

The social scientist Donald T. Campbell offered an insightful analysis of American education in his 1976 paper, "Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change." One quote in particular stands out—a finding known as "Campbell's Law" that has been used to explain the impact that high-stakes testing is having on the nation's schools:

The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

Yesterday the conviction of 11 former educators in Atlanta on charges related to their involvement in a conspiracy to alter student test scores is an example of this Campbell's Law in action. And this wasn't an isolated scandal.

Perhaps these things happen because of negligence. Maybe the teacher is just a rogue offender—an educator attempting to boost test scores for self-serving reasons. It could be the result of intimidation from top-down management, too.Regardless, the growing prevalence in recent years of dishonest practices such as these suggests that something is amiss within America's schools. This new era of School Accountability 2.0 is contingent on the data gleaned from incessant standardized testing like the new Common Core exams—a recipe that doesn't bode well for classroom ethics. School districts are increasingly tying teacher pay to performance, and there's no consensus on the best way to measure student proficiency, so the high test scores are starting to look a lot like money. What emerges is bad news: a carrot-and-stick approach to a sector of the workforcethat many consider to be underpaid.

"They have made their bed and they're going to have to lie in it, and it starts today."

For many, justice was served yesterday when the educators were convicted on charges of racketeering for their role in the high-profile conspiracy, dating back to 2005, to inflate the scores on their students' standardized tests. The group was presumably motivated by the ever-increasing pressure from policymakers to fulfill federal and local performance expectations, which determined their eligibility for perks such as bonuses and even their employment status.

Yesterday's verdict marked the end to a years-long legal process—notorious proceedings that muddied Atlanta's one-time reputation for its apparent success in spearheading one of the nation's most impressive school reformations in recent history. The Atlanta school district's now-deceased superintendent, Beverly Hall, was even recognized as the National Superintendent of the Year in 2009—just months before the Atlanta Journal-Constitution started publishing aseries of stories that raised questions about anomalies in student test scores. A few years later, that reporting evolved into a large-scale investigation into the data titled "Cheating Our Children," eventually expanding their probe to "test integrity nationwide."

After the verdict was read yesterday, the defendants appealed the judge, Jerry Baxter, asking that he refrain from immediately sending the teachers to jail. But they failed to sway Baxter, who responded, "they have made their bed and they're going to have to lie in it, and it starts today." In a statement issued yesterday, the Atlanta Board of Education described the verdict as a closure to "a sad and tragic chapter for Atlanta Public Schools." The board touted the district's new superintendent, Meria Carstarphen, for implementing reforms "to make sure something like this never happens again."

"Challenges remain, for sure," the statement says, "but we are making progress every day and there is great reason to be optimistic."

The Journal-Constitution's findings prompted a two-year-long state investigation into the issue, which concluded that nearly 180 educators, including roughly three dozen principals, had engaged in wrongdoing as part of efforts to manipulate kids' performance metrics and exaggerate achievement levels at at least 44 schools. Then, in 2013, a grand jury indicted 35 educators,including Hall, on various charges including racketeering and theft. Most of them pleaded guilty to lesser charges, but a dozen of them opted to go to trial, which lasted roughly half a year and saw more than 100 witnesses taking the stand, their testimonies totaling thousands of pages. (Two defendants, including Hall, died before they could stand trial.) One former elementary school teacher, Dessa Curb, was acquitted of all charges; the rest of them, however, now face Eleven Atlanta Educators Have Been Convicted for Cheating Conspiracy, Revealing the Dangers of Standardized Testing — The Atlantic:

PAA Action News: ESEA Action Special Issue!

PAA Action News: ESEA Action Special Issue!:

PAA Action News

Apr. 2, 2015

Welcome to PAA Action News, the information and action newsletter of Parents Across America.

PAA Action Alert

Join national ESEA testing outreach day Wednesday April 8 The Testing Resistance and Reform Spring network, of which PAA is a member,  is calling for a day of action for ESEA and testing next Wednesday, April 8. On that day we are asking you to call your Senators and, if you tweet, send out and retweet others' Twitter messages beginning at 1 pm ET, 10 am PT. We'll share some suggested tweets and an official hashtag early next week. Why should you get involved in ESEA? As we've been telling you over and over in this newsletter (!) reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA- formerly No Child Left Behind or NCLB) is moving towards a possible end point very soon. So many of our readers - active parents, teachers and others - are so deep in the trenches with local fights that it's hard to have the time or energy to take on federal education laws. You may be opting out of spring tests, speaking out for better funding, advocating for lower class size and more learning time, or challenging charter school expansion, high-stakes testing, and student data sharing in your district or state. But ESEA affects all of these things. Fixing ESEA will make a difference in your local fights. And the opportunity to change ESEA only comes around once every few years.    Let's take testing as a prime example. The test mania that we hate so much really took hold after the George W. Bush administration turned ESEA into NCLB and changed the grade span testing mandate to an annual testing requirement. We can't fix everything in ESEA - though we've been trying! - but we do have a chance to decrease the amount of and the stakes placed on standardized testing by supporting Option 1 of the Senate ESEA proposal.  We still think that the best way to be heard is to visit your Senators and Congressional representatives in their home offices while they are home for spring break, now through April 10. If at all possible, it would be even better to visit on April 8,    our national day of action for ESEA and testing.  You can call the local offices and make an appointment. If you can't get in to see the actual legislator, you can still make a major impression by meeting with his/her legislative aide, talking to any aide, or even just physically showing up at the office and leaving a written or verbal message (see below). Find their home office contact info at senate.gov and house.gov. What to say??? Legislators have a lot of issues to deal with. What really sticks in their minds are personal stories that illustrate the issues you care about. You know what those stories are - they are the experiences that made you reach out to PAA! For background, you can stick to the first point listed below, which relates to testing. Then if you want to share the other three points, and others that you care about, go for it!   We strongly support the Option 1 proposal for grade span testing. While this won't end the current misuse and overuse of standardized tests, it can help ease the testing mania gripping our nation. We believe that the existing NAEP test - expanded nationwide - can provide the necessary accountability check and balance on carefully designed local assessments. We further ask for your support for enhanced local control in deciding how to evaluate teachers and schools: we oppose the use of standardized test scores as major determinants of teacher or school evaluation. We believe in supporting the public schools in our communities. Research shows that these schools generally outperform charter schools while serving a larger proportion of special needs students. We oppose programs that take scarce funds away from our neighborhood schools in favor of expanding charter schools or providing voucher funds for private schools which are not accountable to the community and have not proven to be better alternatives. With more than half of all public school children now living in poverty, we believe that federal funding must grow to meet the students' growing needs and growing demands on our schools. You can also share: PAA's position paper, Testing and ESEA, a copy of PAA's one-page ESEA position paper, "What Parents Value and how Congress should act," PAA's 1-page chart on the Senate bill for Senators, and our 1-page chart on HR 5 for Congressional reps.   Finally, if you haven't already used this handy FairTest form on grade-span testing, do it now!

Mark your calendars!

Save the date! New PAA webinar on charter school accountability PAA is co-hosting another webinar on Tuesday, May 5, at 8 pm ET, with the Center for Popular Democracy. We'll be talking about CPD's recent survey on charter school accountability. The study, done with In the Public Interest, found that voters want greater oversight for charter schools and more assurance that charters won't hurt other public schools by drawing students away. We'll also talk about another new CPD report, this one on charter school fraud in California. The study found that: California's charter oversight system's deficiencies suggest that the $81,400,000 in fraud, waste and abuse by charter operators that has been uncovered to date is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Based on conservative estimates, California stands to lose more than $100 million to charter school fraud in 2015. The vast majority of this fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because California lacks the oversight necessary to identify the fraud We'll have the registration information for you in our next newsletter.  Join fellow PAAers at the NPE conference!  Several PAAers will be in Chicago for the April 24-26 Network for Public Education (NPE) conference and we're planning to get together for a little socializing and some PAA talk before the start of the conference, on Friday the 24th at about 4 pm, somewhere convenient to the conference venue. Even if you aren't an official PAA chapter or affiliate leader, or if you're thinking about starting a PAA chapter and have some questions, we'd love to see you! Please contact Julie for details and to RSVP: JulieW@parentsacrossamerica.org  You can still register for the NPE conference   We're looking forward to seeing lots of friends at the NPE conference. PAA will offer a workshop on the Impact of Race, Cultural Bias, and Poverty on Educational Opportunity. Register here for the conference if you have not already done so.  Looking way ahead.... PAA annual conference in DC We have set tentative dates for our annual conference in DC - July 20-24, 2015. Pencil us in!   PAA Action News: ESEA Action Special Issue!:

Smartest public high schools in the US - Business Insider

Smartest public high schools in the US - Business Insider:

The 50 smartest public high schools in the US

Some people believe that the best high-school educations come from private schools, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Public schools can provide first-class global educations that prepare students for college and successful careers.

The experts at college data website Niche put together a list of the smartest public high schools in the US based primarily on state-assessment proficiency, the colleges that students go on to, AP enrollment and exam pass rates, graduation rates, and composite ACT and SAT scores.

Because there isn't a good 1-to-1 ratio for ACT to SAT score comparison, the SAT composite scores are expressed here as a range. You can read more about Niche's methodology here.

Read more Which are the 50 smartest public high schools in the US: http://www.businessinsider.com/smartest-public-schools-in-the-us-2015-4?op=1#ixzz3WC7FoVA7

Read: America’s Richest School Districts

America’s Richest School Districts

The average income of Americans differs by state, county, city and ZIP code, obviously. At each level, the amount residents earn every year impacts available government services, health and overall quality of life. This is especially true when education is examined by school district.

Read: America’s Richest School Districts

Read: America’s Poorest School Districts 

24/7 Wall St. analyzed Census data from 2006 through 2010 for each of the more than 10,000 unified school districts in the United States. Wealth appears to have an outsized effect on education at the local level. Residents that live in wealthy school districts have among the best schools in the nation based on graduation rates, test scores and independent ratings of academic success. Children who attend these schools are more likely to earn a college degree than the national average. To illustrate the influence wealth and poverty have on educational attainment, 24/7 Wall St. examined the wealthiest and poorest school districts in the country.

Nearly all of the wealthiest school districts are within a short distance of one of the richest cities in the country. Other than one suburb of Portland, Ore., all of the wealthiest school districts are commuter towns of New York City, located in either Fairfield County, Conn., or Westchester County, N.Y. The poorest districts are rural communities scattered all over the country, from Ohio and Kentucky to Texas and Mississippi.

Read more: America’s Richest School Districts - 24/7 Wall St. http://247wallst.com/special-report/2012/06/06/americas-richest-school-districts/#ixzz3WC7sTCmV
Follow us: @247wallst on Twitter | 247wallst on Facebook

Four Things I Want to Say to Novice Teachers - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

Four Things I Want to Say to Novice Teachers - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:

Four Things I Want to Say to Novice Teachers

 During the brouhaha over Nancie Atwell's remarks on CNN, my friend and 40-year teaching veteran Claudia Swisher remarked that when she'd first read Atwell's books, she questioned whether the techniques Atwell developed would work in traditional public schools. After fully absorbing Atwell's ideas, however, she began incorporating them--and found them not only useful, but transformative.

I hope this is what happens with all the novice teachers who are up in arms at being told that public schools no longer welcome the creativity and vitality of new classroom practitioners. If Atwell's honest comments left you angry, go deeper into the rich instructional ideas in her books. Turn your irritation into a learning experience.

If I were leading an organization of pre-service teachers, here's what I would tell them:     

 Welcome to a Changed Profession. Nobody is "discouraging" you from becoming a teacher.In fact, we want you to become career teachers--not tried-it-and-ran temps--so we're honoring you, by telling you the truth. Which is: this is not your mother's profession. Things have changed, even in the years since you graduated high school.

We warmly welcome your new ideas, energy and enthusiasm. But sticking with teaching these days will require more than grit and a tool bag of instructional strategies.  In order to re-shape teaching and learning, to become the innovative, dedicated, future-focused professional teacher in your personal vision, you need to see the big picture: What is the conventional wisdom around the future of public education in America? Is that conventional wisdom the truth? Plan on changing your mind a dozen times in your first year of independent practice. 

Beware of Media Oversell. Media campaigns are just that: what the public has been fed, by people whose job it is to promote certain programs and initiatives. I #loveteaching, too--but I've been paying careful attention to the evolution of public school teaching for more than forty years. We can't paper over the recent influx of top-down mandates--endless standardized everything, loss of teacher control over curriculum and instruction, evaluation by test data--with clever hashtags or faux outrage (like that directed at Nancie Atwell).  I genuinely love teaching too much to hand it over, lock, stock and whiteboard, to hired guns who are shaping MY work according to the dictates of funders.

Scrutinize the glossy websites of non-profit educational organizations. Analyze books and articles written by hot young (non-teacher) authors. Ask yourself: What ideas are they selling? Who will benefit? Another way of expressing this necessity of evaluating media soundbites around K-12 education (first popularized by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in their seminal, 

The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago

The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago:

2015 National Conference – Chicago

The Countdown to Chicago Has Begun!

If you haven’t registered for the 2nd Annual NPE Conference in Chicago, April 25-26, there is still time! You can register for the conference on our Eventbrite page, and you can also get adiscounted room at the nearby Downtown Marriott Residence Inn.

The theme of this year’s conference is:

“Public Education: Our Kids, Our Schools, Our Communities”

In addition to a powerhouse line-up of featured speakers, including Yong Zhao, Diane Ravitch, Lily Eskelson Garcia, Randi Weingarten and Chicago’s own Karen Lewis and Jitu Brown, we’ve put together more than forty dynamic and informative panels. There is no other conference that provides the opportunity to be inspired by over 100 of the nation’s leading education activists, and share in their passion for public education. The lineup of panels and panelists is guaranteed to make your weekend with our family of NPE friends and allies one to remember.

They include:

Student Panel – Tanaisa Brown, Kristin Towkaniuk & others. 

If you’re coming to this conference you care about our students and probably have your own ideas on how to help. This is your chance to hear directly from some of our nation’s leading student leaders. Tanaisa, Kristin & Hannah will talk about what life is like for students today, how they feel about all of these so-called reforms, and what they’re doing to take back their schools.

 The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago:

BATs and Social Justice - Dr. Denisha Jones, Aixa Rodriguez and Kristin Vogel 

Looking to grow your understanding on the connection between race, inequity in education funding and what’s happening in your classrooms? Then join these three prominent voices from the Badass Teachers Association who are committed to social justice and equity in the schools and communities in which we work and live. The conversation starts here.

 The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago:

Perils of Ed Tech - Leonie Haimson, Rachael Strickland and Cynthia Liu

Want to know what’s happening in the world of student privacy? Three leading national activists will bring you up to speed. Between these three women, they have lead the movement to stop inBloom, built a national Student Privacy Coalition, and exposed the iPad scandal in LA Unified School District leading to the downfall of LAUSD Superintendent Deasy. Their workshop will focus on ways to strengthen federal protections, outline strategies for successful coalitions that lobby state & federal officials, and discuss how to expose the fraud and waste inherent in these systems.

Defending the Early Years - Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin

Concerned about what’s happening to our youngest children? Join leading national experts as they discuss their work pushing back against the current ed reform climate where academic skills and tests are replacing experiential, play-based learning. This interactive workshop will bring you into full participation by sharing experiences of what has worked and what has not as the group develops concrete actions steps for moving forward to Defend the Early Years.

 The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago:

More Than A Score - Jesse Hagopian

Black Student Lives Matter: The achievement gap is often used by corporate reformers to justify their policies. Are you looking for a way to respond to them that is both respectful of the experiences of communities of color, but does not accept high stakes testing is the way to close the achievement gap? Then join teacher and author Jesse Hogapian as he explores this topic. Jesse will share his experience in leading the successful MAP boycott in Seattle, discuss examples of gaining support from civil rights groups, and talk about how we can all help build a multicultural, anti-racist movement to support all students.

In the coming days and weeks we will continue to highlight additional panels and panelists, but don’t wait to register for the conference! We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!

Chicago from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.

The Network For Public Education | 2015 National Conference – Chicago:

The Lost Purpose of School Reform by Diane Ravitch | NYRblog

The Lost Purpose of School Reform by Diane Ravitch | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

The Lost Purpose of School Reform

Diane Ravitch

Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

One-room schoolhouse near Selma, Alabama, 1965

Fifty years ago, Congress passed a federal education law to help poor children get a good public education: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. Revised many times, it is still the basis for federal education policy today. When it was last reauthorized in 2001, it was named “No Child Left Behind,” which was President George W. Bush’s signature education initiative. Both the House and the Senate are now debating a reauthorization of the law, which has been pending since 2007. Since the law gives Congress the power to determine how federal dollars will be spent, it is crucial to understand its origins and how it has evolved over time. Much is at stake.

ESEA was originally conceived as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty.” It had one overriding purpose: to send federal funding to schools that enrolled large numbers of children living in poverty. The schools that stood to benefit most were mainly in the South and in big cities.

Advocates of federal aid to public schools had been trying without success to persuade Congress to approve it since the 1870s. Their efforts consistently failed because neither party trusted the other to control the nation’s schools. Over the years, there were other complicating issues: Southern members of Congress (all of whom were white) feared that federal aid might be used to interfere with racially segregated schools; urban members of Congress opposed federal aid unless it also served children in Catholic schools; and in the mid-twentieth century, far-right conservatives suspected that the federal bureaucracy might push Communist ideas into school curriculums.

President Johnson was a master persuader, and he assuaged everyone’s concerns. The purpose of the law, he insisted, was to help poor children get a better education, and everyone could agree on that. The South could no longer preserve its segregated system, not only because of the Brown decision of 1954, but because Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, giving the federal government the power it needed to demand desegregation of southern schools. Catholics were mollified because they were included in ESEA’s funding (a Supreme Court decision later removed them). And by 1965, the Red Scare had subsided and was no longer an obstacle to federal aid to education. The bill was funded with $1 billion, and the federal government was at last committed to policies aimed at providing minorities and the poor with the same quality of education as everyone else. That funding, however, was far from sufficient, because public schools are typically underwritten by property taxes, which favor those who live in affluent areas.

Over the years, federal education funding for poor children has steadily grown but has never been enough to overcome the vast inequities between rich and poor. The United States is one of the few advanced nations in the world that spends more public moneyon rich children than on poor children.

With the passage of time, new federal programs were added to ESEA, such as funding for bilingual education, anti-drug programs, and charter schools. But the major shift in its purpose occurred in 1994, when the Clinton administration renamed it the Improving America’s Schools Act and required states to write academic standards and develop state tests for at least reading and mathematics. This was the first codification in federal law of the idea that uniform standards and testing were necessary to insure The Lost Purpose of School Reform by Diane Ravitch | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

Merryl Tisch Suggests Firing A Lot of Black and Hispanic Teachers | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

Merryl Tisch Suggests Firing A Lot of Black and Hispanic Teachers | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

Merryl Tisch Suggests Firing A Lot of Black and Hispanic Teachers

New York Regents Chancellor Dr. Merryl Tisch has been downplaying the potential negative consequences of sweeping changes to teacher tenure and evaluation in the new state budget.  On April 1st, she commented that the new system does not specifically say that test scores make up 50% of teacher evaluations and suggested that concerns over the weight given to tests was overblown.  Dr. Tisch is technically correct which, as we all know, is the best kind of correct.  The new evaluation law does not say scores are 50% and it leaves various weighting decisions to the Regents and the NYSED.  However, the scoring matrix, which is in the law, has two axes, one of which is for test scores.  I can count really well up to two, and it is fairly obvious the tests, as one axis out of two, are 50% of the evaluation (not to mention that both axes determine the outcome in the matrix roughly equally).

Dr. Tisch was back in the press this morning, suggesting that she thinks the new evaluation system should potentially be lifted from districts that have had strong records of student achievement.  The upshot is that if a district has high graduation and college acceptance rates and strong “college readiness” (aka test scores), they could be freed from state regulations and allowed to craft their own evaluation and accountability systems within certain parameters.  Dr. Tisch suggested that such changes could come from the Commissioner’s regulatory power, but she would also consider asking legislators to make amendments to the newly passed system allowing these changes.  In her view, such changes in favor of high performing districts would “…give them the respect that they deserve for the job that they do, and let us turn our attention, our scarce resources and our capacity to the districts that really need us in terms of access and opportunity for students.”

It would also mean many fewer African American and Latino teachers would ever get tenure and many more of them would be fired.

Now I am not suggesting that Chancellor Tisch actually hopes to do this, but there are consequences to not thinking things through in policy.  Exempting districts with records of high achievement from the new evaluation requirements would place a significantly heavier burden on teachers of color and result in their removal at disproportionate percentages.  The reason for this is fairly simple: just as our communities and schools are segregated by race and income, so are our teachers.  In New York State, 9.8% of teachers are Hispanic and 8.6% are Merryl Tisch Suggests Firing A Lot of Black and Hispanic Teachers | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

Did Comcast Ghostwrite Rahm Emanuel’s Letter to the FCC? | The Nation ‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬

Did Comcast Ghostwrite Rahm Emanuel’s Letter to the FCC? | The Nation:

Did Comcast Ghostwrite Rahm Emanuel’s Letter to the FCC?

The Chicago mayor’s office confirmed that Comcast advised Emanuel on how to support a proposed merger with Time Warner—but it is refusing to make the communication public.

On August 26th of last year, David L. Cohen, a Comcast Executive Vice President, joyously announced that the cable giant’s controversial proposed merger with Time Warner had generated a frenzy of supportive letters to the Federal Communications Commission from nearly 70 mayors and dozens of other state and local officials. In particular, Cohen singled out a letter from one of the country’s most high-profile mayors.

“We’re proud to have the support of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who praised Comcast’s acclaimed Internet Essentials program and the increased investment and faster Internet speeds that the transaction will bring in his letter,” Cohen wrote, referring partly to Comcast’s discounted services for low-income customers. Emanuel’s letter, submitted to federal regulators just days before, was indeed glowing. The mayor asserted his belief that the proposed merger would not reduce consumer choice or drive up prices (a primary concern of the proposal’s critics), before launching into breathless praise of the company’s charitable activity in Chicago.

“Comcast currently makes considerable contributions in Chicago,” Emanuel writes, “and we expect those contributions to continue—and increase—if the proposed combination is approved.”

The authorship of Emanuel's letter, however, may be more complex than meets the eye. Before Emanuel wrote to federal regulators, Comcast appears to have furnished the mayor with some writing assistance in the form of suggested language—and perhaps even a whole first draft—regarding his FCC letter. When The Nation submitted a FOIA request to his office requesting any records of suggested language or any Comcast-supplied draft, the mayor's office responded that such a communication does indeed exist. It is refusing, however, to turn over the Comcast document, citing a state law that allows the withholding of preliminary drafts, suggestions, notes and communications in which opinions are expressed or actions or policies are formulated.

Emanuel’s office also would not respond to questions The Nation originally sent more than four weeks ago—and followed up on several times—that asked whether Comcast had helped draft Emanuel’s letter to the FCC. As long as this record is withheld, any definitive knowledge of the extent to which Emanuel’s letter used corporate lobbying language will likely remain a secret between the mayor's office and Comcast. Emanuel is just days away from a hotly contested runoff election against progressive challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

“It's unfortunate that the mayor’s office is trying to avoid transparency,” said Todd O’Boyle, program director for Common Cause, a nonprofit organization that advocates for government accountability and opposes Comcast’s proposed merger. “FOIA laws should be serving the public interest—they should be vehicle to inform the public not a vehicle for politicians to find Did Comcast Ghostwrite Rahm Emanuel’s Letter to the FCC? | The Nation:

Toward Fiscal Sustainability: A New Approach in Prudent Fiscal Management of Chicago

Click here to go to Jesus "Chuy" Garcia for Mayor of Chicago Website

‪#‎Chuy2015‬ ‪#‎imwithchuy‬