The Network for Public Education has split into two different entities.
The organization by that name will continue to support the improvement of public education and to produce studies, reports, meetings, and statements. Its new executive director is Carol Burris, who recently retired as principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York. Carol is a gifted writer; you may have read one of her many posts published by Valerie Strauss on The Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post. She also received many honors for her leadership as a principal. In accordance with IRS rules and regulations, NPE is a 501 (c) 3 and contributions to it are tax-deductible.
The other part of NPE is called the NPE Action Fund. It will endorse candidates and produce studies and engage in other activities and public information to support public education. The NPE Action Fund is a 501 (c) 4; contributions to it are not tax-deductible. Its executive director is Robin Hiller of Tucson, Arizona. Until now, Robin was the overall executive director of NPE; when we realized we had to be two separate entities to comply with the IRS, Robin chose to lead our political action arm. Robin is the leader of Voices for Children in Tucson, which has served as NPE’s fiscal agent as we await official approval by the IRS. To be endorsed by the NPE Action Fund, candidates must contact Robin to obtain a questionnaire. Return it. It will be reviewed by a committee of NPE board members. We check out potential candidates with trusted local organizations.
Both sectors of NPE have three Board members who serve on both Boards: me, Anthony Cody, and a new board member, Cali Cole, a former business executive who shares our passion for public education and equity; Cali has the financial experience that some of us lack.
So expect more activity from a newly invigorated NPE. We will convene our third annual conference from April 15-17 in Raleigh, North Carolina. That state, now controlled by privatization zealots, needs us, all of us! We are thrilled that our major speaker will be the charismatic Rev. William Barber, the leader of the Moral Mondays movement for social justice in North Carolina and across the nation.
Meanwhile, the NPE Action Fund will be endorsing candidates in local and state elections who are true friends of public education. We can’t give them money, because we don’t the deep pockets. However, we will post a link to their website and encourage you to contribute whatever you can. District by district, city by city, state by state, we will strive to put the public back in public education and oust the out-of-state billionaires.
As we say at NPE, we are many, they are few. They have the money, we have the numbers. This is a democracy. Vote.
Amazing behind the scenes work. Thanks to all. It is even more important now that the billionaires are pouring money into local school board elections and ALEC has a local initiatives arm for everything from sewer contracts to school board elections and policies.
Notice also that Bill Gates intends a to keep pouring money into any pockets that will bend over backward to comply with his agendas.
One of these is ensuring that teachers and “educators” have no status and no opportunity to function as professionals. This means implementing the Common Core with fidelity or else, and no let up on testing?
Another is pouring obscene amounts of money into privatization while pretending to be a fan of public education.
A third is ramping up so-called personalized learning, replacing teachers with “recommendation systems” for step-by-step learning of conventional content, but in ways that gather huge amounts of data and money for the providers of code, graphic interfaces, and data storage.
A fourth will put money into psychological testing and lessons to improve student persistence at tasks, cultivate grit, instill a “growth mindset” all in the belief that excellent student performance in school is not being achieved by some students due to some fundamental issues with their character and attitudes.
The latter is also the hot new way to fund character education while deflecting political difficulties with that. USDE has just funded a version of character education,about $2 million, for “skills for success” training. The grants go to Los Angles, Long Beach, and Chicago public schools, and KIPP in Houston.
Some of the “skills for success” materials, already developed by psychologist Carol Dweck at Stanford, will be tweaked so they can be part of several privately funding mentoring groups in a related “Mentoring Mindsets Initiative.”
The grant competition was designed to allow for renewals of up to three years, and according to President Obama, to focus on “young men of color and other young people who grow up in poverty, drop out of school, have trouble finding meaningful work, or get involved with the criminal justice.”
The grants are a follow-on to Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” task force report. The press release says that about 10,000 students will reached by the programs, touted by deputy secretary John King as helping students ” become college and career ready.” For unexplained reasons, some of this money also expands courses in STEM.
So the “NPE Fund” is now the “NPE Action Fund”?
The c3 is the Network for Public Education.
The c4 is the NPE Action Fund.
Please endorse John Chiang for Governor in California. He has served California so well in various elected roles and has earned his place as a candidate for Governor. Not only is John Chaing an adept legislator and administrator, but he is a really intelligent and diligent man.
His opponent, who hates public schools and works sub rosa and de facto for Eli Broad, is the former LA mayor, Villaraigosa, who helped Eli anoint John Deasy as LAUSD Supt years ago, and who partnered with Deasy to close public schools and charterize them.
With the SW Voters group firmly in his corner as a Latino candidate, even though they cannot use Voteria this time to bribe voters, ’cause it is illegal, they will be informing their constituency how to vote, and to vote for the charter school guy. This will be reinforced by Broad’s non profit partners, United Way, and California Endowment, and others. Villaraigosa will have the Broad backing, and with money poured into the campaign by the usual suspects…Broad, Bloomberg, Waltons, Wassermans, Murdoch, Kochs, etc.
As my long timer colleagues here know, I am a public policy wonk and am working for fair elections all the time….and I tend never to get off the soapbox, am SO boring… but please help us to keep some public schools in California by working AGAINST Villaraigosa and Broad and Deasy, and the FREE MARKET billionaires.
Great news, Diane…best of luck with this bifurcation which gives us the opportunity of direct activism.
Please be aware that in California a new venture of the Latino South West Voters Registration and Education project recently prevailed with their venture called “Voteria” which encourages uninformed inner city, often non-English speakers to go to the polls and vote, and then be entered for a cash prize of $25,000. It worked in the LAUSD election and now we have a multi millionaire charter school director who oversees the 16 schools called PUC, Refugio Rodriguez. This was a travesty since these schools were just audited and the reports show instances of major mismanagement. Bribing people to vote is counter productive to democracy and it should not be allowed.
Using cash bribery to get voters to the polls evidently is illegal in Presidential and in Governor elections, as stipulated by the professor who worked on this project, but it seems it might be used (so far it is unchallenged in the courts) in odd year elections for school boards. This last LA election showed over $5 M being donated to the Deformer candidates by outsider and local billionaires such as Eli Broad, the Waltons, Bloomberg, etc.
We have had a double whammy when last week our Governor, Jerry Brown, signed into law the Motor/Voter bill so that now everyone, including non-documented residents, can apply for a driver’s license and automatically they are registered to vote in California.
I hope that NPE stays on top of this process since is certainly will lead to much voter fraud…and to undue influence by political groups on directing votes to their selected candidates.
This SW Voter group which devised this unethical plan sent a self congratulatory email to all California groups last week and offered their help to run all elections with “Voteria”….and they further sent this email to other states with large Latino populations. It is important to listen to their appended radio interview, and at the end the professor stresses that this is ILLEGAL.
For more information please contact me at
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
Voting gives you a chance to win the lottery Ugh
Great to hear! Can’t wait to see more of the good work you all are doing.
We look forward to learning the endeavors of both entities. Will Darcie Cimarusti, Mother Crusader, be working for both?
booklady, I don’t know the answer to your question. Darcie is very skilled on the computer (I am not). She is a tech whiz.