Monday, January 27, 2014

CORPORATE ED REFORMERS WANT TO OWN YOUR SCHOOL - LET'S CHECK THEIR RECORD #EDREFORM #CHOICE

Charter Schools - Dividing Communities since 1991

CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS WEBSITE

A compilation of news articles about charter schools which have been charged with, or are highly suspected of, tampering with admissions, grades, attendance and testing; misuse of funds and embezzlement; engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest; engaging in complicated and shady real estate deals; and/or have been engaging in other questionable, unethical, borderline-legal, or illegal activities. This is also a record of charter school instability and other unsavory tidbits.

The 10 Worst Corporate Accounting Scandals of All Time

If there is one theme to rival terrorism for defining the last decade-and-a-half, it would have to be corporate greed and malfeasance. Many of the biggest corporate accounting scandals in history happened during that time. Here's a chronological look back at some of the worst examples.

Waste Management Scandal (1998)

Company: Houston-based publicly traded waste management company
What happened: Reported $1.7 billion in fake earnings.
Main players: Founder/CEO/Chairman Dean L. Buntrock and other top executives; Arthur Andersen Company (auditors)
How they did it: The company allegedly falsely increased the depreciation time length for their property, plant and equipment on the balance sheets.
How they got caught: A new CEO and management team went through the books.
Penalties: Settled a shareholder class-action suit for $457 million. SEC fined ArthurAndersen $7 million.
Fun fact: After the scandal, new CEO A. Maurice Meyers set up an anonymous company hotline where employees could report dishonest or improper behavior.

Enron Scandal (2001)

Company: Houston-based commodities, energy and service corporation
What happened: Shareholders lost $74 billion, thousands of employees and investors lost their retirement accounts, and many employees lost their jobs.
Main players: CEO Jeff Skilling and former CEO Ken Lay.
How they did it: Kept huge debts off balance sheets.
How they got caught: Turned in by internal whistleblower Sherron Watkins; high stock prices fueled external suspicions.
Penalties: Lay died before serving time; Skilling got 24 years in prison. The company filed for bankruptcy. Arthur Andersen was found guilty of fudging Enron's accounts.
Fun fact: Fortune Magazine named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" 6 years in a row prior to the scandal.

WorldCom Scandal (2002)

Company: Telecommunications company; now MCI, Inc.
What happened: Inflated assets by as much as $11 billion, leading to 30,000 lost jobs and $180 billion in losses for investors.
Main player: CEO Bernie Ebbers
How he did it: Underreported line costs by capitalizing rather than expensing and inflated revenues with fake accounting entries.
How he got caught: WorldCom's internal auditing department uncovered $3.8 billion of fraud.
Penalties: CFO was fired, controller resigned, and the company filed for bankruptcy. Ebbers sentenced to 25 years for fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators.
Fun fact: Within weeks of the scandal, Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, introducing the most sweeping set of new business regulations since the 1930s.

Tyco Scandal (2002)

Company: New Jersey-based blue-chip Swiss security systems.
What happened: CEO and CFO stole $150 million and inflated company income by $500 million.
Main players: CEO Dennis Kozlowski and former CFO Mark Swartz.
How they did it: Siphoned money through unapproved loans and fraudulent stock sales. Money was smuggled out of company disguised as executive bonuses or benefits.
How they got caught: SEC and Manhattan D.A. investigations uncovered questionable accounting practices, including large loans made to Kozlowski that were then forgiven.
Penalties: Kozlowski and Swartz were sentenced to 8-25 years in prison. A class-action lawsuit forced Tyco to pay $2.92 billion to investors.
Fun fact: At the height of the scandal Kozlowski threw a $2 million birthday party for his wife on a Mediterranean island, complete with a Jimmy Buffet performance.

HealthSouth Scandal (2003)

Company: Largest publicly traded health care company in the U.S.
What happened: Earnings numbers were allegedly inflated $1.4 billion to meet stockholder expectations.
Main player: CEO Richard Scrushy.
How he did it: Allegedly told underlings to make up numbers and transactions from 1996-2003.
How he got caught: Sold $75 million in stock a day before the company posted a huge loss, triggering SEC suspicions.
Penalties: Scrushy was acquitted of all 36 counts of accounting fraud, but convicted of bribing the governor of Alabama, leading to a 7-year prison sentence.
Fun fact: Scrushy now works as a motivational speaker and maintains his innocence.

Freddie Mac (2003)

Company: Federally backed mortgage-financing giant.
What happened: $5 billion in earnings were misstated.
Main players: President/COO David Glenn, Chairman/CEO Leland Brendsel, ex-CFO Vaughn Clarke, former senior VPs Robert Dean and Nazir Dossani.
How they did it: Intentionally misstated and understated earnings on the books.
How they got caught: An SEC investigation.
Penalties: $125 million in fines and the firing of Glenn, Clarke and Brendsel.
Fun fact: 1 year later, the other federally backed mortgage financing company, Fannie Mae, was caught in an equally stunning accounting scandal.

American International Group (AIG) Scandal (2005)

Company: Multinational insurance corporation.
What happened: Massive accounting fraud to the tune of $3.9 billion was alleged, along with bid-rigging and stock price manipulation.
Main player: CEO Hank Greenberg.
How he did it: Allegedly booked loans as revenue, steered clients to insurers with whom AIG had payoff agreements, and told traders to inflate AIG stock price.
How he got caught: SEC regulator investigations, possibly tipped off by a whistleblower.
Penalties: Settled with the SEC for $10 million in 2003 and $1.64 billion in 2006, with a Louisiana pension fund for $115 million, and with 3 Ohio pension funds for $725 million. Greenberg was fired, but has faced no criminal charges.
Fun fact: After posting the largest quarterly corporate loss in history in 2008 ($61.7 billion) and getting bailed out with taxpayer dollars, AIG execs rewarded themselves with over $165 million in bonuses.

Lehman Brothers Scandal (2008)

Company: Global financial services firm.
What happened: Hid over $50 billion in loans disguised as sales.
Main players: Lehman executives and the company's auditors, Ernst & Young.
How they did it: Allegedly sold toxic assets to Cayman Island banks with the understanding that they would be bought back eventually. Created the impression Lehman had $50 billion more cash and $50 billion less in toxic assets than it really did.
How they got caught: Went bankrupt.
Penalties: Forced into the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. SEC didn't prosecute due to lack of evidence.
Fun fact: In 2007 Lehman Brothers was ranked the #1 "Most Admired Securities Firm" by Fortune Magazine.

Bernie Madoff Scandal (2008)

Company: Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was a Wall Street investment firm founded by Madoff.
What happened: Tricked investors out of $64.8 billion through the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
Main players: Bernie Madoff, his accountant, David Friehling, and Frank DiPascalli.
How they did it: Investors were paid returns out of their own money or that of other investors rather than from profits.
How they got caught: Madoff told his sons about his scheme and they reported him to the SEC. He was arrested the next day.
Penalties: 150 years in prison for Madoff + $170 billion restitution. Prison time for Friehling and DiPascalli.
Fun fact: Madoff's fraud was revealed just months after the 2008 U.S. financial collapse.

Satyam Scandal (2009)

Company: Indian IT services and back-office accounting firm.
What happened: Falsely boosted revenue by $1.5 billion.
Main player: Founder/Chairman Ramalinga Raju.
How he did it: Falsified revenues, margins and cash balances to the tune of 50 billion rupees.
How he got caught: Admitted the fraud in a letter to the company's board of directors.
Penalties: Raju and his brother charged with breach of trust, conspiracy, cheating and falsification of records. Released after the Central Bureau of Investigation failed to file charges on time.
Fun fact: In 2011 Ramalinga Raju's wife published a book of his existentialist, free-verse poetry.

Texaco	13 April 1987	Oil
Qintex	1989	Real Estate	.
Polly Peck	30 Oct 1990	Electronics,food, textiles
Bank of Credit and Commerce International	5 July 1991	Banking
Nordbanken	1991	Banking
Carrian Group	1993	Real estate
Barings Bank	26 Feb 1995	Banking
Long-Term Capital Management	23 Sep 1998	Hedge fund
Equitable Life Assurance Society	8 Dec 2000	Insurance	.
HIH Insurance	15 March 2001	Insurance
Pacific Gas and Electric Company	6 April 2001	Energy
One.Tel	29 May 2001	Telecomms
WorldCom	21 July 2001	Telecomms
Enron	28 Nov 2001	Energy
Chiquita Brands Int	28 Nov 2001	Food
Kmart	22 Jan 2002	Retail
Adelphia Communications	13 Feb 2002	Cable television
Arthur Andersen	15 June 2002	Accounting
Bre-X	2002	Mining
Parmalat	24 Dec 2003	Food
MG Rover Group	15 April 2005	Automobiles
Bayou Hedge Fund Group	29 Sep 2005	Hedge fund
Refco	17 Oct 2005	Brokering
Bear Stearns	14 Mar 2008	Banking
Northern Rock	22 Feb 2008	Banking
Lehman Brothers	15 Sep 2008	Banking
Washington Mutual	26 Sep 2008	Banking
Royal Bank of Scotland Group	13 Oct 2008	Banking
ABN-Amro	Oct 2008	Banking
Nortel	14 Jan 2009	Telecomms
Anglo Irish Bank	15 Jan 2009	Banking
Arcandor	9 June 2009	Retail
Schlecker	23 Jan 2012	Retail
Dynegy	6 July 2012	Energy
AIG^[3]	16 Sep 2008	Insurance

Got Choice? Ubetcha!

Celebrating School Choice

National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) Group: 1 in 5 charter schools not doing well enough to stay open

A group that oversees more than half of the nation's 5,600 charter schools said
as many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of
poor academic performance.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2019784379_charterschools29.html

Sometimes, a Chat Is Just a Chat | My Island View #Edchat

Sometimes, a Chat Is Just a Chat | My Island View:

Sometimes, a Chat Is Just a Chat

January 27, 2014 by tomwhitby

I recently attended a provocative session at Educon. For those who don’t know Educon is an annual education Conference held at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia each year on the week before the Super Bowl. It is a conference of discussion as opposed to a conference of presentation. Each of the sessions is a facilitated discussion that involves the participants.

It was in one such session that #Edchat received what I thought was an unwarranted criticism from one of the participants in the session.

For those who may be new to social media scheduled chats take place on Twitter on various topics in education throughout the week. Each is hosted and moderated by an educator who has an interest in the topic of discussion. This real-time chat is conducted through the use of hash tags (#Edchat), which curate all the tweets, so that the chat can be followed without interference from other tweets on the stream. One would simply create a column to follow the specific hash tag and all other tweets would be filtered out so that only hash-tagged tweets would appear in that column. I gave a complete description of education Chats in this post: Chats: What are they and why do we need them?

The Edchat criticism came in a discussion that I attended on The Privileged Voices in Education; facilitated by two people I greatly admire Jose Vilson, and Audrey Watters. I attended that particular session in need of making myself

Obama's Empty Rhetoric on Education - Stephen Lurie - The Atlantic

Obama's Empty Rhetoric on Education - Stephen Lurie - The Atlantic:

Obama's Empty Rhetoric on Education

In his State of the Union addresses, the president has talked about schooling in very superficial ways.

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

As the crescendo of his first Address to a Join Session of Congress in January 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama decided to share a story of a school. That school was called J.V. Martin Middle School, in Dillon, South Carolina. The President described it as “a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom.” He had visited J.V. Martin after receiving a letter from a student who, despite being “told that her school is helpless,” wrote of her school’s ambition and implored, “we are not quitters.” Obama, in his address, repeated the mantra for full effect.

Following the President’s nod to J.V. Martin, support tumbled in to the school, one of many dilapidated schools in the so-called “corridor of shame,” the impoverished communities on South Carolina’s I-95 corridor. A new school was built, thanks to a $4 million grant and a $37 million loan from the Department of Agriculture. A furniture company in Chicago donated more than $250,000 worth of new desks and chairs. The school was renamed as Dillion Middle School in 2011, and the buzz died down. The President’s mention of the school in his biggest annual speech catalyzed rapid educational improvement, at least to one struggling school. Plaudits were handed out, credit claimed, people moved on.

To check in on Dillon Middle School five years after Obama’s first address to Congress is to summarize the Obama administration’s rhetorical record on

Holding Arne Duncan to a Higher Standard | Jason Stanford

Holding Arne Duncan to a Higher Standard | Jason Stanford:

Holding Arne Duncan to a Higher Standard

Posted: 01/23/2014 12:26 pm

America, the elites are very disappointed in you. We're not keeping up with South Korea and Singapore, they tell us, because you are coddling your mediocre children who are being taught by bottom-of-the-barrel teachers. But have no fear, help is on the way! Pearson, the testing company that has gotten rich by making American students fill in little bubbles all day long, is advising the White House on how to whip us all into college-ready shape.

I must be too busy helping my sons with their homework, picking them up from after-school tutoring and helping them fill out magnet school applications to notice how little I expect from them. No greater eminence than New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman thinks that parents "just don't take education seriously enough." Education Secretary Arne Duncan said "white, suburban moms" need to "change expectations about how hard kids should work."

It's not just lazy-bones parents and their middling progeny that are holding America back. Recently, Duncan noted sourly that "a significant proportion of new teachers come from the bottom third of their college class." After No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have turned the teaching profession into an underappreciated, underpaid collection of glorified

College-Ready, Career-Ready--and Playing Music. - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher

College-Ready, Career-Ready--and Playing Music. - Teacher in a Strange Land - Education Week Teacher:

College-Ready, Career-Ready--and Playing Music.

By Nancy Flanagan on January 27, 2014 11:45 AM

Years ago, in a mid-70s masters class in The Future of Education, the professor told us that we should be prepared to live in a future world where discipline-based 30-year careers with a single focus would fade away. The Renaissance man--it was the 1970s, so we weren't talking about Renaissance women--would re-emerge as national creative force, and our problem-solving and scientific progress as a nation would depend on giving everyone a (wait for it) well-rounded education.

"I'm not talking about sports," he said, smirking. "Did you know that 83% of the physicians in the United States were musicians in high school?"

This was news to me, which is why I think the remark lodged itself in my brain. I have since looked, several times, for some confirmation of that factoid. I have no idea if it's precisely true--but it makes a certain sense to me that people with the drive to make it into and through medical school would also be likely to have accepted the challenge of learning to read music and stuck with playing an instrument or singing in the choir through their K-12 education.

There are plenty of studies and testimonials around the positive benefits of music education in the lives of children. I always worry a little, however, about articles suggesting a stint in the high school orchestra will yield higher lifetime earnings or the ability to "work in teams." Plenty of my band students have ended up in what you might call low places. Hoping your child will

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Selling us junk

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Selling us junk:

Selling us junk

“They are saying this is choice, yet they are not advertising any public schools at all,” said protester Rousemary Vega. “That doesn’t give any parents choice.” -- NBC 5 Chicago

Rahm and Byrd-Bennett have turned into junk salesmen. Their New Schools Expo was little more than a flea market of mostly inferior goods being sold to desperate shoppers driven to the fair by the debasement and threats of closure of their neighborhood schools.

(WBEZ/Linda Litton)

WBEZ reporter Linda Lutton visited the Expo and describes what she found:

A high-profile Chicago schools fair today is supposed to show off quality new schools, many of them charters...Schools set up tables with photos and marketing materials to try to entice students to enroll. Principals and teachers offer freebies like candy or balloons to kids...

But a WBEZ analysis of the more than 100 new schools featured at the expo this year shows 34 percent of them are rated Level 3 by the district, the lowest grade given. Schools receiving the designation include campuses run by some of the largest charter networks in the city, including UNO and the Chicago International Charter School. This is the first year the district has graded charters on the same scale as traditional schools. In recent years, the district has closed neighborhood schools rated