CNN reported today that the latest polls show Jeb Bush in “free-fall,” at 3% in the polls. Bush entered the GOP race with the biggest campaign chest and as the Establishment favorite.

He planned to use his success in “reforming” education in Florida as his major issue. By “reform,” he meant introducing vouchers and hundreds of charters, including for-profit charters. His calling card was privatization, not reform.

He still believes he will emerge victorious despite his current poll numbers.

Guess we won’t have to deal with the phony claims about the Florida miracle.

A few weeks ago, New York State Commissioner announced a survey of Common Core and its tests and invited responses from all. In three weeks, she received 5500 responses. She said that New Yorkers support Common Core.
The New York State Allies for Public Education, leaders of the opt out movement and critics of Common Core, created a similar survey and received 12,000 responses in one week and said New Yorkers do not support Common Core, the testing, and the evaluations tied to it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 4, 2015
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education http://www.nysape.org
NYSAPE Survey Shows New Yorkers Overwhelmingly Reject
Common Core Standards, Tests & Evaluation Policies

In response to NYS Education Department’s AimHighNY survey on the Common Core that many parents and teachers found excessively complex and not open to general comments, New York State Allies for Public Education created a user-friendly survey and posted it online between November 23 and November 30. Close to 12,000 New Yorkers filled out our survey in just a week’s time. According to Commissioner Elia, only 5500 completed NYSED survey in three weeks’ time. Governor’s Common Core task force has received 1,798 submissions since December 2, according to Politico.

The respondents to the NYSAPE survey overwhelmingly reject the Common Core standards, believe the state exams and test-based teacher evaluation system are flawed, and that these reforms have worsened instruction in both English Language Arts and Math at the classroom level.

Parents, teachers, administrators, school board members and concerned NY residents all took part in the NYSAPE survey. Of special note, 11 percent of our survey respondents also completed NYSED’s survey and 32.9 percent attempted to complete NYSED’s survey but gave up.

Of those who responded to the NYSAPE survey, 70 percent oppose the Common Core standards, 4 percent support them, 23 percent have concerns with them, and 3 percent are undecided. An even higher percentage –83 percent — believe the Common Core standards in both ELA and Math have worsened instruction. 83 percent also disagree with the shift to close reading strategies.

Over 80 percent of respondents indicated that they believe ELA and Math standards in grades K-3 are developmentally inappropriate for many students. Fewer than 4 percent of respondents say that the ELA and Math standards for grades 4-8 are well designed.​

For grades 9-12, only 2 percent of respondents approve of the ELA and Math Standards. Only 6.2 percent agree with the Common Core’s quota for informational text versus literary text.

An overwhelming number – 91 percent –say that the Common Core exams in grades 3-8 are flawed, while fewer than 1 percent believe they are valid or well-designed. Among those who find the tests to be flawed,​ many believe the tests are developmentally inappropriate, too long, not useful for assessing students with disabilities and/or English language learners and that reading passages and questions are too difficult and confusing.

Of our respondents, 54 percent indicated that high schools should use the previous NYS Regents exams rather than new exams aligned to the Common Core standards, while roughly 40 percent believe that students should not have to pass any high stakes exams to graduate.

Those who took the NYSAPE survey are nearly unanimous, at 96 percent, that test scores should not be linked to principal or teacher evaluations. 86.5 percent say that the state should abandon the Common Core standards and return to the New York’s former standards until educators can create better ones.

The full results of the survey are posted here: http://www.nysape.org/nysape-cc-survey-results.html

“NYSAPE’s findings are in line with the poll results and most of the testimony to the Governor’s Common Core Task Force. There is no way around this; the Governor and the legislature must eliminate these Standards, revamp the tests, and reverse the harmful education laws,” said Lisa Rudley, Westchester County public school parent and NYSAPE founding member.

One of the survey respondents said, “As a teacher who trained at Bank Street College of Education, I find the standards developmentally inappropriate. As a reading specialist, I find the kindergarten standards far too high in reading and writing. As a parent, I am very concerned because I have a child who hates reading because it was pushed so hard at his school.”

“The results of the survey confirm that the vast majority of parents and teachers do not approve of the Common Core, and oppose the rigid quotas for informational text and ‘close reading’ strategies that have straitjacketed instruction throughout the state. They want to abandon these standards, and return to our previous ones until educators can craft better ones. We hope that state policymakers, including the Commissioner, the Governor, the Board of Regents and our legislators, will listen,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters.

“The tremendous response to NYSAPE’s survey underscores that parents and educators are eager to be heard. The fact that the Commissioner Elia could not create an accessible survey only fuels concerns about her competence and willingness to truly engage parents and practitioners,” said Bianca Tanis, Ulster County public school parent, Rethinking Testing member and educator.

“Vice Chancellor Bottar attempted to portray the appointment of Commissioner Elia as a positive change, assuring the public that she would be able to communicate more effectively with parents and educators to find common ground. Vice Chancellor Bottar’s continued poor judgement and complicity with the failed reform agenda can no longer be tolerated; it is time for him to step down,” said Jessica McNair Oneida County public school parent, educator and Opt Out Central NY founder.

NYSAPE, a grassroots organization with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state, is calling on parents to continue to opt out by refusing high-stakes testing for the 2015-16 school year. Go to http://www.nysape.org for more details on how to affect changes in education policies.

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Education reporters across the nation reported breathlessly that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were “giving” $45 billion to education and public health. They did not get the nuances of the financial transaction behind the $45 billion “gift” of the Zuckerbergs, but writers familiar with the business of philanthropy did.

Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica writes in the business section of the New York Times that the Zuckerberg pledge will actually help Zuckerberg, because the money will go to a Limited Liability Corporation that he controls, not a foundation.

Mark Zuckerberg did not donate $45 billion to charity. You may have heard that, but that was wrong.

Here’s what happened instead: Mr. Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle.

Sorry for the slightly less sexy headline.

Mr. Zuckerberg is a co-founder of Facebook and a youthful megabillionaire. In announcing the birth of his daughter, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, declared they would donate 99 percent of their worth, the vast majority of which is tied up in Facebook stock valued at $45 billion today.

In doing so, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His P.R. return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Mr. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having, in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other.

What’s more, a charitable foundation is subject to rules and oversight. It has to allocate a certain percentage of its assets every year. The new Zuckerberg L.L.C. won’t be subject to those rules and won’t have any transparency requirements….

So what are the tax implications? They are quite generous to Mr. Zuckerberg. I asked Victor Fleischer, a law professor and tax specialist at the University of San Diego School of Law, as well as a contributor to DealBook. He explained that if the L.L.C. sold stock, Mr. Zuckerberg would pay a hefty capital gains tax, particularly if Facebook stock kept climbing.

If the L.L.C. donated to a charity, he would get a deduction just like anyone else. That’s a nice little bonus. But the L.L.C. probably won’t do that because it can do better. The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the L.L.C. donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax….

Mega-donations, assuming Mr. Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.

The point is that we are turning into a society of oligarchs. And I am not as excited as some to welcome the new Silicon Valley overlords.

Leslie Lenkowsky is an expert on foundations who is a professor at Indiana University. Some years back, he headed a conservative think tank (the Hudson Institute). He says in this article in the Wall Street Journal that the Zuckerberg gift may mark the end of philanthropy, and he explains why.
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are pledging $45 billion over their lifetimes to an “initiative” to help solve the world’s problems has been widely hailed as an extraordinary act of philanthropy. But generous as this commitment is, it actually marks the culmination of a frequent critique of philanthropy in its current form, emanating chiefly from high-tech entrepreneurs like Mr. Zuckerberg.

Most reports of the couple’s pledge, made after their daughter’s birth last week, have characterized it as a “gift” to charity, the sort that wealthy businessmen from John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have traditionally made. But in fact it is an investment in a limited-liability corporation to be called the “Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.”

Although perhaps contradictory, the purposes of the company are clearly philanthropic, to advance “human potential” and promote “equality,” rather than earn money for its owners. However, it will not just make grants to nonprofits, as foundations typically do. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will also own stakes in for-profit businesses in fields like education and health care, which its owners believe will help achieve their philanthropic goals….

What Mr. Zuckerberg and others are proposing instead is to harness the profit motive on behalf of their philanthropic goals. This is often referred to as a “double bottom-line” approach: The companies in which the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invests will have to show both a financial return in order to be sustainable and a social one—for example, increased numbers of lives saved or children finishing school—in order to obtain additional funding. And at least in theory, those companies that are unsuccessful would in time go out of business, unlike traditional charities, which can keep going, even if they are not very effective at their work, as long as they are good at raising money from donors.

The approach Mr. Zuckerberg is taking has several advantages. One is that if he had created a foundation, American tax laws would have required him to sell most of the Facebook stock he gave it. But by using the stock to fund a limited-liability company, he can keep control over as much of it as he wants (though he may sell some to make grants or investments)…..

Finally, charities are already complaining—often not unjustifiably—that business-minded donors are doing too much micromanaging and not giving those directly in touch with the problems they want to solve—and people they want to help—enough leeway to try unproven or unorthodox methods of making progress. If donors were to become equity investors, the conflicts would undoubtedly grow.

Even so, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative represents the most significant effort so far to take a new approach to the kinds of problems with which philanthropy has long struggled. If it fails, at least it will disappear, as its investment portfolio loses money, unlike foundations, most of which are set up to go on indefinitely, regardless of what they are accomplishing. But if it succeeds, it may bring an end to philanthropy as we have known it.