Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board Election « Alice Walton « Hedge Clippers

Partner Paper with Public School Parents in LA: Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board Election « Alice Walton « Hedge Clippers:

PARTNER PAPER WITH PUBLIC SCHOOL PARENTS IN LA: OUT-OF-TOWN BILLIONAIRES & TRUMP BACKERS ATTEMPT TO HIJACK LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION

The California Charter School Association (CCSA), directly and through its network of entities, has been the biggest spender in the 2017 election for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school board members to represent Districts 4 and 6, having spent over $4 million to-date.  Nearly all of CCSA’s political campaign funding comes from millionaires and billionaires.  Out-of-town billionaires make up the bulk of this funding.

Between July 2016 – December 2016, out-of-town billionaires like Doris Fisher, Co-Founder of The Gap, Alice Walton, heiress to the WalMart fortune, and Michael Bloomberg, New York financier and former Mayor, all made big political contributions to the California Charter School Association Advocates (CCSAA) Independent Expenditure Committee.

The combined net worth of these three out-of-town billionaires is $125.5 BILLION.  Doris Fisher lives in San Francisco, Alice Walton lives in Bentonville, Arkansas and Michael Bloomberg lives in New York City.

Additionally, numerous contributors to the CCSAA political fund are Trump supporters, a position that puts them out-of-sync with the majority of Los Angeles voters.

Alice Walton and the WalMart family, for example, donated to the Super PAC that worked to elect Trump, donated to Mike Pence, Jeff Sessions, and to the Alliance for School Choice, an organization that Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos helped to lead. Richard Riordan, who gave $1 milion to CCSAA to then launch an independent expenditure committee working to elect Melvoin and Gonez, is a Trump supporter and donor. [i]  Many others CCSAA donors are as well.

CCSA has poured money into these school board races directly through its Independent Expenditure Committee, [ii] and has also acting as a pass through for three other independent expenditure committees that are involved in the race.

• CCSAA sponsors and funds[iii] the deceptively named Parent Teacher Alliance (PTA), also a big electoral spender.

• The PTA, CCSAA helps fund[iv] the Students for Education Reform (SFER) Action Network, which also spent money on this election.

• LA Students for Change Opposing Steve Zimmer for School Board 2017 is funded by a $1,000,000 donation[v] from former LA Mayor Richard Riordan that was received through CCSAA

According to available filings,[vi] CCSAA and the groups it funds have provided almost all the independent electoral spending on behalf of Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez in the hotly contested District 4 and 6 races.

• District 4: of the reported independent expenditures on behalf of Melvoin — $2,415,345 in the primary and $768,316 in the general, or $3,183,661 in total – almost all were filed by CCSAA with Eli Broad and Speak UP – Supporting Nick Melvoin for School Board 2017 contributing the rest.

• District 6: all reported independent expenditures on behalf of Gonez — $739,821 in the primary and $588,564 in the general, or $1,328,385 in total — were filed by the CCSAA and PTA.

CCSAA has acted as a conduit for millions in campaign contributions flowing into the Los Angeles school board race, and while we know the identities of donors through 2016, the people of Los Angeles won’t know the identities of the more recent donors until well after the election.

HIDDEN MONEY DONORS OPPOSING PUBLIC EDUCATION FUNDING STRIKE AGAIN

Since the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United we’ve seen an explosion in hidden money (so-called “dark money”) pouring into political races fueled by corporate self-interest, a desire for the super wealthy to lower their taxes and/or to privatize the functions of government. These races have typically been big races for the control of the House, Senate, Governor’s mansion or the presidency. In Partner Paper with Public School Parents in LA: Out-of-Town Billionaires & Trump Backers Attempt to Hijack Local School Board Election « Alice Walton « Hedge Clippers:

Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies - NonDoc

Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies - NonDoc:

Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies

(Editor’s note: This story was authored by Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch and appears here in accordance with the non-profit journalism organization’s republishing terms.)

In schools across the nation, including in Oklahoma, children whose school meal accounts aren’t paid in full sometimes face embarrassment in the cafeteria line.

Some schools take away their trays and give them an alternative meal, like a cold sandwich. Others put a stamp on their hand that reads “lunch money” as an alert to parents but also visible to peers.

Practices such as these, called “lunch shaming,” have triggered parent backlash in some districts, including at least two in Oklahoma. The practice was recently banned in New Mexico, and Texas and California are considering similar laws.

A few weeks ago, the Choctaw-Nicoma Park School District halted its practice of stamping the hands of children who owe lunch money after an outcry from parents.

Harrah Public Schools faced scrutiny recently when a substitute cafeteria worker took hot meals from children whose accounts were empty; the children received a cold sandwich to eat instead.

State lacks protocol for unpaid lunches

Oklahoma schools are allowed to take these actions because the state does not have a policy on how to treat non-paying students, letting districts decide for themselves.

Chris Bernard, executive director of nonprofit Hunger Free Oklahoma, said inferior meals, hand stamps and chores for students with meal debt unnecessarily humiliate children, which can lead to them being bullied or picked on and cause mental health issues.

“(Schools) need to be thinking about practices that are not singling out children for something they absolutely have no control over and potentially putting them in a situation where they don’t have the nourishment they need to be successful in school,” Bernard said.

The students affected by these policies typically don’t qualify for the federal free-lunch program, although there may be some whose parents decline to apply. Still, there are often family circumstances behind meal debt, such as a parent losing a job, or working intermittently, or other financial setbacks.

Unpaid lunch tabs add up

But some school officials say lunch programs are costly to run, and unpaid meal debt is a Lunch shaming: USDA sets deadline for school policies - NonDoc:

How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC | janresseger

How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC | janresseger:

How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC

Last week, Wendy Lecker, an attorney with New Jersey’s Education Law Center and a columnist for the Stamford Advocate published a commentary that defines the meaning of public services and specifically the meaning of “public” in education: “Michigan professor Marina Whitman recently noted that the essence of a public good is that it is non-excludable; i.e. all can partake, and non-rivalrous; i.e. giving one person the good does not diminish its availability to another. Some school reforms strengthen education as a public good; such as school finance reform, which seeks to ensure that all children have adequate educational resources. Unfortunately, the reforms pushed in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations attack education as a public good.  For example, choice—charters and vouchers…. Choice operates on the excludable premise of ‘saving a few.'”

Lecker explores the exclusionary implications of school privatization—charters and vouchers.  But there is also a way to make the public schools themselves less public, and that is the introduction of school choice into public school districts themselves. This has also been a centerpiece of much of modern school “reform,” and the most basic example has been promoted as a formal policy for school districts to adopt: Portfolio School Reform.  Portfolio School Reform has been formulated into principles and promoted across our nation’s big city school districts by a think tank called the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE).  Here is how CRPE defines “portfolio school reform” and its network of “portfolio school districts“: “The portfolio strategy is a problem-solving framework through which education and civic leaders develop a citywide system of high-quality, diverse, autonomous public schools. It moves past the one-size-fits-all approach to education. It puts educators directly in charge of their schools, empowers parents to choose the right schools for their children, and focuses school system leaders on overseeing school success.”

There is a lot of rhetoric in this definition about creating autonomous public schools, moving past one-size-fits-all schools, and putting educators directly in charge.  It is hard to know what all this means, but the next clause is clearer: Portfolio School Reform “empowers parents to choose the right schools for their children.”  And CRPE’s rhetoric promises that parents will all have the right to choose “a great school for every child in every neighborhood.”  Portfolio school reform theory posits the creation of privatized alternatives but it also includes the How Public School High School Choice Reinforces Segregation and Inequality in NYC | janresseger:

The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?

The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker)

In a recent commentary piece in the Stamford Advocates, Education advocate and columnist Wendy Lecker provided an important analysis of the unwarranted and dangerous attack on public education that is taking place in the United States.  Wendy Lecker writes;

Political theorist Benjamin Barber, who died April 24, wrote about the importance of education as a public good. “Education not only speaks to the public, it is the means by which a public is forged.”

As he noted, education transforms individuals into responsible community members, first in their classrooms and ultimately in our democracy. Local school districts are also the basic units of democratic government.

Michigan professor Marina Whitman recently noted that the essence of a public good is that it is non-excludable; i.e. all can partake, and non-rivalrous; i.e. giving one person the good does not diminish its availability to another.

Some school reforms strengthen education as a public good; such as school finance reform, which seeks to ensure that all children have adequate educational resources.

Unfortunately, the reforms pushed in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations attack education as a public good. For example, choice — charters and vouchers — is a favorite policy of all three administrations. Choice operates on the excludable premise of “saving a few.”

In operation, choice makes education rivalrous. As a New York appellate court observed, diverting funds from public schools to charters ‘benefit a select few at the expense of the ‘common schools, wherein all the children of this State may be educated.’”

The experience in America’s major cities reveals choice’s damaging results. At a recent NAACP hearing, New Orleans residents spoke of an all-charter system rife with fraud and mismanagement. The schools are highly segregated with poor children and children of color relegated to schools with limited resources, inexperienced teachers and long commutes.

Michigan’s policy of unfettered charter expansion, together with a money-follows-the-child school funding system decimated Detroit’s public schools, along with other poor districts, and has left schools across that state intensely segregated.

Chicago’s choice policies disenfranchised mostly communities of color, shuttering neighborhood schools to open charters with a history of excluding ELL students and students with disabilities and with expulsions at 10 times the rate of Chicago’s public schools.

Recent research from Roosevelt University reveals that Chicago’s policies toward charters are a major factor causing the fiscal crisis in Chicago’s public schools. Chicago’s mayor Rahm Emmanuel claimed to close neighborhood schools, in predominately poor and African-American The war on education as public good (By Wendy Lecker) - Wait What?:

CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12

CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12:

Pearson May Quit US K-12

The world's biggest 800 pound corporate education gorilla, Pearson, has announced that they're considering the sale of their US K-12 digital and print curriculum business (the US Learning Services wing of the British-based giant).

We should have taken a virtual trip instead

The move comes at the end of yet another bad period for the previously unstoppable education-flavored mostrosity. The big feature of their latest meeting was supposed to be a showdown over a hefty raise (or "rise" as the Brits call them) in CEO John Fallon's pay, which seemed a bit out of kilter after what has been called a "disastrous" profit warning and the company's worst year on the stock market in fifty years.

How did they end up in such a mess? Last November the Wall Street Journal reported that Pearson had "bet big" on Common Core as well as failing to deliver on its digital teaching materials, despite Fallon's gushing baloney about Pearson's imminent awesomeness as recently as last May. But in January of this year, the word started going out that Pearson was a lousy investment.

The decision to cut loose the US curriculum business is not a small thing. Despite being a UK based biz, Pearson gets a reported 63% of its sales from the US.

Not that the education behemoth is backing quietly away. Last Friday they also announced "it has made a number of strides in its transition to digital products and services," with a particular emphasis on post-secondary initiatives. Their online degree initiative announced a partnership with Duquesne University on top of their ongoing work with University of Nevada-Reno, Regis College, and Maryville University. Pearson proudly touts 300,000 online course starts.

Watch next year for the "next generation" of digital courseware "in development for full commercial launch" next year, including the IBM Watson cognitive tutor, which sounds... alarming. Plus a few CURMUDGUCATION: Pearson May Quit US K-12:

The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning

Pupils are working on their own. The second and third grade reading class of 63 pupils … is using a learning center and two adjoining rooms. Two teachers and  the school librarian act as coordinators and tutors as the pupils proceed with the various materials prepared by the school’s teachers and … developer, The Learning and Research Development Center at the U. of Pittsburgh. Each pupil sets his own pace. He is listening to records and completing workbooks. When he has completed a unit of work, he is tested, the test is corrected immediately, and if he gets a grade of 85% or better he moves on. if not, the teacher offers a series of alternative activities to correct the weakness, including individual tutoring, There are no textbooks. There is virtually no lecturing by the teacher to the class as a whole. Instead, she is busy observing the child’s progress, evaluating his tests, writing prescriptions, and instructing individually or in small groups of pupils who need help.*

The school is Oakleaf elementary near Pittsburgh (PA) and the time is 1965. Implemented across all grades, the innovative program was called Individually Prescribed Instruction or IPI (el_197203_tillman-2, p. 495).

Over a half-century ago, before there were smart phones, laptops, and tablets, university developers and school-site practitioners championed IPI as a program where students move through materials at differentiated paces until each achieved mastery of the content and skills to then continue on to the next unit of study.  Observers found students engaged in the process, pleased with the prompt feedback, and delighted that each could move at his or her pace rather than wait for the entire class to move to the next lesson. Here was the apex of student-centered learning. The algorithms of the day made it possible for students to learn independently, find out how they were doing swiftly, go from easy to difficult content on their own, ask teachers for help, and avoid the dominant teacher-centered repertoire of whole group-lecture, discussion, textbook chapters, quizzes and exams that took days to return—you get the picture.

In 2017 looking in the rear-view mirror, IPI in 1965 sounds familiar to those of us who enter schools and  see contemporary lessons where students learn content and skills independently on their tablets and laptops that machine learning The Rear-View Mirror on Personalized Learning | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers

Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers:

Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers

As a special education and parent advocate who has run twice in LAUSD elections under the rallying cry of “Change The LAUSD”, my first inclination is to recommend against a vote for the incumbent in the District 4 Board race. However, as the election of Trump has shown, voting with a “throw the bums out” mentality can be disastrous if the people who fill these voids are less interested in fixing what is broken than burning the whole thing down. Nick Melvoin and his supporters’ plans to push even more students into charters falls into the latter category and will only serve to bankrupt the District, taking away opportunities for those left behind.

In some ways, Melvoin represents the Status Quo for the District. After all, the LAUSD “already has the highest number of charters – more than 200 – of any school system in the country”. These privately run organizations are largely unregulated by a Charter School Division that is headed by a former employee of one of the groups pushing to elect Melvoin. While tagged as anti-charter by the CCSA, this Board has only rejected nine charter renewals during the last five years. This includes the several from Celerity charters, whose offices were raided by the FBI. This inadequate scrutiny of charters would be lessened even further by a Board with a pro-charter majority.

With financial backing by former Superintendent John Deasy, the election of Melvoin would also represent a giant step backward. Steve Zimmer: A Last Stand Between Public Education and the Privatizers:

Reaching Black Students Harder for White Teachers in the Age of Trump | gadflyonthewallblog

Reaching Black Students Harder for White Teachers in the Age of Trump | gadflyonthewallblog:

Reaching Black Students Harder for White Teachers in the Age of Trump

“Not everything that can be faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
–James Baldwin

“I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.”
–Donald Trump

Mariah’s eyes were wide as dinner plates.

She covered her mouth with her journal and pointed at the wipe board at the front of the room.

On it, I had written my question for the day. It’s how I usually begin class for my 8th grade students.

It read:

“Some movies and books like “To Kill a Mockingbird” describe what life was like in the South before the civil rights movement. To do so, they use the N-Word. Is it ever okay to us the N-Word? Why or why not? When might it be appropriate if at all? Why?”

I guess I’ve been teaching this for too long, because I didn’t expect Mariah’s reaction.

Not that was she alone. Several of my mostly impoverished and black students were looking around at each other in shock.

Kendra even said under her breath, “I don’t want to do this.”

We had just begun reading the novel yesterday. I thought it was time to address this issue before we were confronted with the word in the text.

In all of my classes that day, students had been interested in the query. But never had any of them reacted this way.

One student raised her hand and asked, “Which word are you talking about?”

I said, “I don’t want to say it, but it starts with an N and rhymes with trigger. Do you know what I’m getting at?”

They knew. Yet in removing doubt, I had only reinforced their outrage.

I thought maybe if they tried to write an answer first, it might help them organize their thoughts and maybe comprehend the point of the lesson. But they wouldn’t be Reaching Black Students Harder for White Teachers in the Age of Trump | gadflyonthewallblog:

Dear extraordinary teacher, - Lily's Blackboard

Dear extraordinary teacher, - Lily's Blackboard:

Dear extraordinary teacher,

 Dear extraordinary teacher, - Lily's Blackboard:

If You Call It “School Choice,” You’ll Go to Hell

Center for a Stateless Society » If You Call It “School Choice,” You’ll Go to Hell:

If You Call It “School Choice,” You’ll Go to Hell

Kevin Carson | @KevinCarson1 | Support this author on Patreon | May 8th, 2017

Right-libertarian shills for school charterization like to use the euphemism “school choice,” which is about as misleading as referring to proprietary walled garden platforms like Uber as the “sharing economy.” The charter school movement’s inroads occur, almost without exception, in places where choice has been suppressed by the state. The Charter Mafia hates choice. Charterization, where it occurs, is imposed by a process about as free and democratic as the National Party coup that established Apartheid in South Africa.

Charterization is just another example of the kind of corporate “privatization” that is advocated by right-libertarians, in which public assets created at taxpayer or ratepayer expense are enclosed by politically connected private actors. Such enclosure, of land and of everything else, has been with us since the beginning of ruling classes and states. Such enclosures, and the battles against them, were described in Livy’s history of the Roman Republic, where commonly owned public lands were enclosed by the patrician landed oligarchy.

We find the model of “privatizing” taxpayer-created assets and services — i.e. selling or contracting them out to corporations — almost exclusively in places characterized by what Naomi Klein calls “Disaster Capitalism,” where some extraordinary circumstance has given the capitalist state unaccountable authority to transfer public assets to its private sector cronies. Hence the mass “privatization” (a.k.a. looting) in Chile after the Pinochet coup, in Russia after Yeltsin’s seizure of power and forcible suppression of the Duma, in Iraq under the “Coalition Provisional Authority” puppet government installed by the United States, and in the Michigan municipalities placed under the dictatorial authority of state-appointed “Emergency Managers.”

In the United States, similarly, we see large-scale charterization in places like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where government seized emergency powers and a major part of the black population was in exile far from home. We see it in places like Detroit under the above-mentioned emergency managers, and Chicago under the corrupt and authoritarian administration of Rahm Emanuel. And we see it in my home state of Arkansas, where the largely black Little Rock school district was taken over two years ago by the state, which has taken advantage of the suspension of local control to push charterization in cahoots with private interests like the Walton Family Foundation.

To add insult to injury, the Charter Mafia are (having removed the school district from local control) attempting to bully the people of Little Rock into approving a property tax millage increase for the school district which is now completely unaccountable to them, so its charter-happy absentee management can promote their agenda.  A vote on the $600 million tax increase is scheduled for May 9. (“Stockholm syndrome, a tax dodge and empty promise in Little Rock school tax election,” Arkansas Times: Arkansas Blog, April 11).

Advocates for the tax increase are actually using the issue of local control to blackmail voters into approving it. Bobby Roberts, a leading spokesman for the tax campaign, warned: “If the citizens of Little Rock cannot pass this, if I were [Arkansas Education] Commissioner Johnny Key or I were the governor I would say, ‘I am in no hurry to turn this school district back over to an elected school board because there is no support in the Center for a Stateless Society » If You Call It “School Choice,” You’ll Go to Hell:

Lacking oversight, charter schools squandered $223 mil of your tax dollars - Education Votes

Lacking oversight, charter schools squandered $223 mil of your tax dollars - Education Votes:

Lacking oversight, charter schools squandered $223 mil of your tax dollars

Remember when we told you that since 1994, 15 states reportedly lost more than $100 million of taxpayer money to charter-school waste, fraud, and abuse? That was back in 2014.

Since then the situation has gotten much worse, according to a new report by the Center for Popular Democracy. Instead of $100 million, that amount now stands at more than $223 million—once again, that’s more than $223 million in alleged and confirm cases of charter-school waste, fraud, and abuse.

A key element of the problem remains that charter-school funding and growth are outpacing oversight at all levels of government.

The rapid expansion of the charter sector in recent years is a particularly important factor in the fraud epidemic,” reads the report. “Local and state entities charged with oversight of charter schools are quickly becoming overwhelmed, yet the federal government continues to pour taxpayer dollars into this expansion project. Over the past 20 years, the federal Department of Education has channeled over $3 billion into states to increase the quantity of charter schools without requiring strong oversight systems.

Click on above image to see full report

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General echoed similar concerns regarding charter-school funding and oversight. However, none of this appears to be slowing down President Trump and his new education secretary, Betsy DeVos, whose only qualification for her new post is that she gave lots of money to politicians who support the corporate takeover of public education.

“As a staunch advocate for charter schools in Michigan (her home state), DeVos has spent millions in campaign donations supporting state candidates who favored ‘school choice’ and opposed increased oversight and regulation,” states the report. “The result of Michigan’s experiment in charters has been a system of failing schools run by for-profit companies, and millions of dollars lost in fraud and waste.”

As most of you know, charter schools are publicly funded schools that are managed privately, in many cases, by for-profit companies. Under the Trump-DeVos education agenda, federal funding for charter schools would jump from $333 million this year to $501 million in 2018.

According to the report, when you look at all the money being spent on charter schools at the local, state, and federal levels, it totals about $40 billion annually. And without proper oversight, taxpayers this year reportedly stand to lose about $2.1 billion.

Policymakers can stem the tide of public funding being lost on charter waste, fraud, and abuse. The report’s recommendations include the following reforms:

• Required audits to detect fraud and increase transparency and accountability among charter-school operators and managers;
• Clear, planning-based public investment programs that link equity, transparency, and accountability to charter-school expansion; and
• Increased transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide necessary information to state agencies to detect and prevent fraud.

Without the necessary oversight for charter schools, the report’s authors conclude that taxpayers will be subject to more of their dollars—hundreds of millions of dollars—being lost to charter-school fraud, waste, and abuse.Lacking oversight, charter schools squandered $223 mil of your tax dollars - Education Votes:

Parents who want recess say lawmakers are using kids as ‘pawns in a political game’ | Miami Herald

Parents to lawmakers: Don’t support budget bill solely for kids’ recess | Miami Herald:

Parents who want recess say lawmakers are using kids as ‘pawns in a political game’

TALLAHASSEE 

Passionate parents, like Kate Asturias of Miami and Angela Browning of Orlando, have been fighting for years to get guaranteed daily recess for their children and the more than 1.2 million other kids in Florida’s public elementary schools.

The two moms trekked to Tallahassee on Friday, for the countless time, hoping to see lawmakers finally make that happen. They left disappointed once again.

The favored proposal of “recess moms” and dads that unanimously passed the Senate a month ago (SB 78) wasn’t brought to the floor by House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’Lakes, before Friday’s session deadline — despite parents’ numerous emails and phone calls urging him to take up the bill, which had the votes to pass easily.

Instead, Corcoran prolonged a conclusion to the recess proposal by lumping it — with a never-before-seen exemption parents didn’t ask for — into a 278-page education budget bill released Friday evening, three days before lawmakers will vote Monday on an annual budget package they can’t change.

Filled with disappointment and anger, parents vented their frustration in social media groups this weekend — and some now have a message for their lawmakers: Don’t vote “yes” on this bill just so Florida’s kids can be assured recess.

“This is not just about recess anymore. This bill is a mishmash of some policies that have never even been vetted before,” Browning wrote Saturday night to parents in the “Recess for All Florida Students” group on Facebook. “It’s not how the process is supposed to work. The people, and those they elected to represent them, are supposed to be involved in the process. A conforming bill dropped after 4pm on the last day of session, with no amendments permitted and an up or down vote, is no way to govern.

“We can’t expect legislators to support it based solely on their support for recess,” she said.

Asturias, of the “Recess for Miami Students” group, noted that the new recess language is seven lines out of 6,848 in the bill, and “I understand.”

“It’s so disappointing that our kids were used in this way, and the message of recess and what it stood for was used ... as political cover,” she said. Parents “feel like recess was just kind of this very nice, sweet, pure movement — it was something for the kids — and they feel like it was just used in a mean way, a nasty way, as political leverage.”

Meanwhile, Corcoran claims he “saved” the recess proposal by adding it to the budget. (Daily school recess was not part of earlier budget conference talks, as it requires no Parents to lawmakers: Don’t support budget bill solely for kids’ recess | Miami Herald:

11 Ways Chicago Is the Beating Heart of the Disastrous Charter School Agenda | Alternet

11 Ways Chicago Is the Beating Heart of the Disastrous Charter School Agenda | Alternet:

11 Ways Chicago Is the Beating Heart of the Disastrous Charter School Agenda

Chicago's political elite have fallen under the spell of the charter industry’s billionaire sponsors—and the results spell disaster for K-12 education.

Chicago’s public school system has become a showcase for the negative effects of K-12 privatization, according to a new report that tracks how the city replaced struggling local schools with dozens of charters that didn’t perform better, yet deprived traditional schools of funds, students and public accountability.

The report, "Closed by Choice: The Spatial Relationship between Charter School Expansion, School Closures and Fiscal Stress in Chicago Public Schools,” tracks 108 charter schools that opened between 2000 and 2015, a period when Chicago Public Schools (CPS) was shutting struggling schools, cutting district funding and reducing staff. It details and confirms what many charter critics have long said, that lobbying from pro-privatization forces swayed the city’ political leaders to impose top-down reforms that riled neighborhoods, undermined traditional K-12 schools, increased segregation and did not lead to schools with better academic results.

Perhaps most insidiously, the report describes in great detail how the CPS system aggressively shut down struggling schools in neighborhoods where student numbers were dwindling, while allowing better-funded charters to open up nearby, taking a greater share of taxpayer funds that might have been used to rescue struggling schools. The report was written by Roosevelt University’s associate professor of sociology Stephanie Farmer, Loyola University PhD candidate Ashley Baber and University of Illinois PhD candidate Chris Poulos.

“CPS’ approach to saturating neighborhoods with declining school-age population with new charter schools is stripping all middle- class, working-class and lower-income children, families, and communities of education security, where schools are rendered insecure by budgetary cuts, deprivation, or closure,” the report’s conclusion begins. “Education insecurity is the product of the school reform agenda focused on cannibalizing the neighborhood public schools in order to convert CPS into a privatized 'choice' school system.”

“While new charter schools continue to proliferate in low demand neighborhoods, all CPS neighborhood public schools experience debilitating budget cuts that lead to the elimination of teaching professionals and enriching curriculum,” it continues. “The most vulnerable communities are stripped of their 11 Ways Chicago Is the Beating Heart of the Disastrous Charter School Agenda | Alternet:

The Public School System Is Rigged Against Poor And Black Children | HuffPost

The Public School System Is Rigged Against Poor And Black Children | HuffPost:

The Public School System Is Rigged Against Poor And Black Children

Charter school operators successfully market their schools as the better option. They use standardized test scores to make their point. However, the truth is, when it comes to student outcomes, there is very little difference between traditional public schools and public charter schools. Because of superior marketing and student recruitment strategies, charter operators have convinced a substantial number of parents that their schools are the better option.

After working nearly 30 years as an urban school educator, I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the rules of the public school game are rigged against poor and Black children. The guardians of the game focus on three strategies to rig it: deception, fear, and misinformation.

As a former public school insider, I see and understand how politicians and educators deceive the public, manipulating data to draw pictures of progress, which in many instances are nothing more than illusions. An increase in high school graduation rates does not mean the students are ready for college or careers. An increase in college enrollment does not mean a higher college completion rate. A decrease in student suspension rates does not mean the school environment is safer. Achieving a level of proficiency on standardized tests does not mean one can think and grasp complex concepts.

The emphasis on standardized tests may be the most damaging type of deception that public schools practice.

The emphasis on standardized tests may be the most damaging type of deception that public schools practice. Politicians persistently pressure public school personnel to produce improved standardized test results, which are the main measurement of school quality. This places teachers in a dilemma. They either teach to the test, as often directed by school administrators, or they risk their job security.

Arguably, many people become teachers because they love teaching. Most probably had no idea to what extent politics would influence their teaching practice. They quickly learn that standardized testing is the most politically charged aspect of their job. Ironically, teachers are not taught to teach to the test. Yet, this practice of teaching to the test dominates their pedagogy on all levels, particularly grades 3 through 12. Furthermore, the overemphasis on test prep robs children of quality instructional time, not to mention limiting any attempts at creativity by teachers.

Teachers know that if their students’ tests scores are low, they face the threat of a negative rating or termination. This is one reason they support unions: job security.

Other than collective bargaining, the job of teachers’ unions is basically twofold: increase and retain membership. The more members there are, the more money unions raise by collecting dues, money that can be used to lobby politicians for more and stronger job protections as well as higher salaries. In this scenario, children only matter because each child comes with a dollar amount. That is one reason unions fight against any form of school choice. Parents who pull their children out of public school hurt the unions’ bottom line: money.

Of all stakeholders in public education, parents are the least informed. After all, the public school game can only be played if parents put their children in the game. However, the recent rise in the number of public charter schools is causing parents to explore other options for their children. This is a game changer.

Charter school operators successfully market their schools as the better option. They use standardized test scores to make their point. However, the truth is, when it comes to student outcomes, there is very little difference between traditional public schools and public charter schools. Because of superior marketing and student recruitment strategies, charter operators have convinced a substantial number of parents that their schools are the better option.

There is evidence to support the claim that some charter school leaders pressure children with special needs to attend their local public schools. It is also true that some low-performing children are encouraged to leave charter schools. The Public School System Is Rigged Against Poor And Black Children | HuffPost: