Please open and read this action alert from NPE Action.
We urge all concerned citizens, parents, and educators to contact your Senators and encourage them to cut the budget of the federal Charter Schools Program (“charter slush fund”) and use the $440 million currently budgeted for Title 1 and the nation’s neediest children.
NPE wrote a report on the federal Charter Schools Program and documented that one-third of the charter schools it funded between 2006-2014 either never opened or closed right after opening. The percentage of failed charters was even higher in states such as California and Louisiana. The CSP is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. The failed federally-funded charters wasted nearly $1 billion over a six-year period studied.
Charter advocates attacked the report but no one has pointed out a single error of fact. They don’t like it because it shows in accurate detail that the federal Charter Schools Program is awash in waste, fraud and abuse.
Some of the most prominent members of the House of Representatives signed a letter criticizing the Department of Education’s failure to exercise oversight of the CSP and calling on Betsy DeVos to provide oversight of the program and to update the CSP database, which has not been updated since 2015.
The CSP currently is funded at $440 million. DeVos asked to raise it to $500 million. The Appropriations committee of the House of Representatives proposed a cut of $40 million, reducing it to $400 million.
Make no mistake. This is Betsy DeVos’s charter slush fund. This year, she gave $89 million to the richly-funded KIPP, and $116 million to IDEA, which plans to open 20 charter schools in El Paso, which will swamp the local public schools. She also gave nearly $10 million to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain, which is swimming in hedge fund money. The CSP is play money for DeVos. The whole program should be canceled. Charter schools are not needy. They do not need or deserve federal aid. Let the Waltons and Charles Koch and Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Reed Hastings and Michael Bloomberg pay for them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s political.
DeVos knows if she increases funding to charter schools, no one in ed reform will object that she cut funding to public schools.
It works, too.
Public school students, for some reason, have been deemed not worthy of having advocates in DC. Instead they get DeVos and her huge publicly funded entourage traveling the country bashing public schools, in the hope students will transfer to the schools they prefer- charter and private schools.
I have no idea why the public is paying for Betsy DeVos’ anti-public school campaign. She offers absolutely no benefit to 90% of students and families. In June she will have spent the last 6 months of “work” exclusively promoting private school vouchers.
She doesn’t even pretend to serve students in public schools. Nothing for them since Trump took office, other than school shooting protection training and drug abuse prevention. Apparently the US Department of Education believes this is all our kids are doing in public schools- trying not to get shot and/or using drugs. What a horribly grim, joyless and wholly inaccurate view of public school students.
Signed.
The Koch machine is operating behind a new name. The 700 cronies who contribute $100,000 or more annually, gave up on the name, Freedom Partners.
The public woke to the ALEC oligarchy and the absurdity of “freedom” in the context of the nation with the most incarcerated population in the world and the income inequality of a third world nation. The 700 are calling themselves Stand Together. The question is, are they going to stand together extinguishing freedom for their fellow citizens or, are they going to be buried together so that American democracy can survive.
Done
Though writing to Rick Scott and Marco Rubio about this is a little like asking Donald Trump to send a contribution to The Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The letter hasn’t the chance of a) a snowball in hell, b) a rational or compassionate thought in Donald’s brain.
Diane,
Just a follow up on an unrelated topic; here is a link to Wendy Kopp’s commencement address at UC Berkley last Saturday (5/18):
https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/05/20/commencement-speaker-wendy-kopp-lead-us-forward-differently/
Wendy Kopp has been a leader in the attack on unions and the teaching profession. The TFA idea asserts that anyone can teach, with only five weeks of training. Her recruits run for office, with financial help from TFA and DFER. The Atlanta School Board, for example, was taken over by TFA, and it is promoting the portfolio model (charter schools that hire TFA).
I could only get through half of it. Had to run to the toilet to wretch for the rest of it. Thankfully, for me. I’m in a hotel tonight. Apologies to the maintenance staff. Left a tip on the nightstand.
Done. Booker will ignore. Wonder if Menendez will listen?
Nail……..down……..Biden. Make him either side with the Charters, or start explaining why he disagrees with what Obama and Arne Duncan did. By the way….latest poll numbers…Biden 35……Sanders 16, Warren, 13 and Harris 8…….37.Biden is tweeting today that Trump is wrong…..he did not abandon Pennsylvania. I wonder if Biden even knows who Gulen is.
Done. I also shared on social media with many colleagues.