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Wisconsin: Two Former Aides of Scott Walker Turn Against Him, Support Evers

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2018 //
9

A former top aide to Governor Scott Walker turned against him and made an ad endorsing his Democratic challenger Tony Evers.

“A second former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker has come out against him, saying the GOP governor’s team told him to meet with payday loan lobbyists and discouraged him from creating documents that could be turned up under the state’s open records law.

“Former Financial Institutions Secretary Peter Bildsten joins ex-Corrections Secretary Ed Wall in excoriating their former boss, claiming they were told not to send emails and cutting digital ads for Walker’s Democratic challenger, state schools Superintendent Tony Evers.

“A third former top aide to Walker has also contended he was told not to create documents that would have to be turned over under the public records law.

“I was told to avoid creating electronic records,” Bildsten says in a digital ad debuting Monday. “I thought Scott Walker was different, but he’s just another politician looking out for himself.”

The people of Wisconsin should throw this charlatan out of office. Walker has earned a stunning defeat. Let’s hope this is the beginning of the end for this puppet of the Koch brothers.

Categories Fraud, Koch Brothers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Breaking News! Florida Judge Throws Amendment 8 Off the November Ballot

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2018 //
8

In a huge victory for the Florida League of Women Voters and the public, a Florida Judge struck down a proposed amendment to the state constitution that was written by privatizers and intended to confuse and deceive voters.

“A judge in Tallahassee this morning struck Amendment 8 from Florida’s November ballot, saying the three-pronged measure about schools was “misleading” and failed to inform voters about its purpose.

“The ruling was a victory for the League of Women Voters of Florida, which last month filed a lawsuit seeking to block it from the ballot, saying voters should not be asked to change Florida’s Constitution based on unclear and deceptive language.

“Amendment 8 includes three proposed changes to the state constitution, unrelated except that they all deal with public schools. The most controversial deals with charter schools and the other two with term limits for school board members and the teaching of civic literacy.

“The lawsuit focused on the section of Amendment 8 that would add a phrase that says local school boards could control only the public schools they established. It was proposed as a way to make it easier for charter schools — publicly funded privately run schools — or other new educational options to flourish. Now, charter schools need local school board approval to open, but that requirement would vanish if the proposal passed.”

In another report from Florida:

A circuit judge threw out a proposed constitutional amendment intended to advance the privatization of public schools. The amendment contained several topics including one to eliminate the state’s responsibility to provide a uniform system of public schools. Patricia Levesque, leader of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, was a member of the Constitutional Revision Commission. It is telling that the commission dared not put the question honestly to the public but concealed it.

“A Florida judge is throwing a proposed amendment dealing with charter schools off the November ballot.

“Circuit Judge John Cooper ruled Monday that the amendment proposed by the Constitution Revision Commission is misleading and does not tell voters what it really does.

“Amendment 8 combines several ideas into one amendment including term limits for school board members. But the amendment also makes it easier for charter schools to get set up around the state. Charter schools receive public money, but are run privately.”

“Cooper pointed out that the amendment does not even use the words charter schools but would affect their creation.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Florida, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Privatization

Gail Collins on The Bane that Is Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2018 //
13

A very welcome column about our odious Secretary of Education by the brilliant Gail Collins.

The Bane That Is Betsy DeVos https://nyti.ms/2MvmgC5?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Today let’s talk about the evil deeds of Betsy DeVos.

We’ve been distracted, what with Omarosa and the Manafort trial and that $90 million military parade we were so looking forward to. At the same time, our secretary of education has been busy, working to protect for-profit colleges from their students.

Yes! We keep being told that Donald Trump was elected because working-class Americans were worried that their kids wouldn’t be able to move up in the world. And now DeVos is making it easier for those very same kids to be cheated when they try to prepare for a career.

It’s quite a story, just as DeVos is quite a gal. Probably the first secretary of education with a $40 million family yacht that’s registered in the Cayman Islands, presumably to avoid American taxes.

Is that the yacht that got mysteriously untied the other day?

Yes, it was moored in Ohio and an unknown person set it adrift, causing up to $10,000 in damage. We do not approve of this sort of behavior, people! Somebody could have gotten hurt. And the DeVos family might have been without a floating residence, except for the other nine yachts they own.

But before I permit any more distractions, we need to discuss policymaking at the Department of Education:

The Obama administration worked very hard to weed out bad for-profit colleges. The policy it finally came up with was to compare an average graduate’s debt with the average graduate’s earnings. Then cut off federal grants and loans to the schools that had a really terrible ratio. And give the students who’d gotten a raw deal a chance to get their loans forgiven.

Excuse me, but does this apply to, say, philosophy majors? My grandson is finishing up at the state university and I do not see how all these courses on Heidegger are going to get him work.

No, we’re talking about schools that are just there to prepare students for a career, whether it’s computer engineering or cooking or auto mechanics. Your grandson is in a privileged minority. If you want an American college student to worry about, Suzanne Martindale of Consumers Union says you should think less about a kid on a four-year campus and more about “someone 29 with three kids.”

Or Stephanie Stiefel, who enrolled at the now-defunct for-profit International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa to get a B.A. that she was assured would lead to a good-paying position in interior design: “They made it seem so simple — just do well in class and finish the program.” She graduated with a 3.8 and $62,000 in debt, then discovered that the only jobs she could land were minimum-wage positions she could have gotten without any training at all. Other schools wouldn’t accept her credits when she tried to get an advanced degree. Now, 10 years later, she’s finished a tour of duty in the Army and owes $110,000. “At this point I just make the payment and cry about it,” she said.

DeVos, meanwhile, is worried about the government making “burdensome” demands on the for-profit schools. We will take a break for a minute to sigh.

Oh gosh, this is so depressing. I hate thinking about the things this administration is doing to ordinary people. Is there any chance you could distract me by working in Omarosa?

Well, be a good citizen and stay with me for a minute.

DeVos loves for-profit education — you may remember she championed an overhaul of the Michigan school system, which replaced troubled public schools with truly terrible charter schools, most of them for-profit.

So she’s chipping away at anything the for-profits don’t like. Like the Obama rule allowing aggrieved students to petition to get their loans forgiven. The new idea would pretty much limit relief to people who’ve fallen into deep financial distress. Nobody seems to have seen that one coming.

And lord knows what’s next. Amy Laitinen, at the nonpartisan think tank New America, is worrying that the department will “allow a college to outsource its program to an unaccredited provider.” Which in theory could mean that when you pay your tuition to what seems to be a legitimate school, you could find yourself bused over to Trump University for classes.

I’m so glad you got Trump University in there.

DeVos has stuffed her department with people from the for-profit education industry. The guy who’s supposed to be overseeing fraud investigations is a former dean of a for-profit named DeVry University, which paid $100 million to settle a lawsuit over misleading marketing tactics.

But you still promised me Omarosa. Find a way to work her in.

The famous memoir claims Trump calls his secretary of education “Ditzy DeVos” and vowed to get rid of her. The first certainly sounds likely. But by now we are well aware that the current president of the United States is incapable — oh, irony of ironies — of firing anybody. And I don’t want to give you the impression that Trump has any reservations about for-profit colleges that make grandiose promises to their students about future careers, while taking their money and preparing them for nothing whatsoever.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

California: Torlakson Creates a Task Force to Review State Charter Laws

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2018 //
12

Tom Torlakson, the outgoing state superintendent of public instruction in California, has created a task force to review the charter school laws in the state.

California has more charter schools than any other state. The California Charter School Association is the richest, most powerful lobby in the state and has been able to stymie any overhaul of the law. The CCSA has staunchly opposed any revision of the law that might require accountability or transparency from charter schools and that would, for example, bar conflicts of interest or for-profit charters.

Governor Jerry Brown, who has been a progressive leader on so many major issues, has been a faithful defender of charter schools, vetoing any legislative efforts to update the law.

But, it now appears that the new governor will be Gavin Newsom, and he has no debts to the CCSSA, which directed millions of dollars to Antonio Villairaigosa in the primaries, who ran a distant third.

Given the reshuffling at the top, it is time to fix the conditions that allow frauds and scandals to go undetected in the charter sector.

Responsible members of the charter industry should work diligently to remove the fraudsters and grifters from their sector, as should everyone.

Charters should not have the ability to appeal from the district board to the county board to the state board, where they are certain to win approval, no matter how ill-qualified their staff.

At present, given the lack of any accountability for the expenditure of public money by charters, the state has experienced many scandals. To learn more about the woeful state of California’s charter industry, read Carol Burris’s carefully researched “Charters and Consequences.”

The Torlakson commission has the chance to get the law right, which would benefit both public schools and charter schools.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Scandal

Valerie Strauss: “Why Would Anyone Deliberately Hurt Students” Who Were Defrauded By Scam Colleges?

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2018 //
15

Valerie Strauss wrote here about Betsy DeVos’s plan to remove consumer protections from students who were scammed.

“Why would anyone want to make it harder for defrauded students? Well, the Education Department says that college students are “adults who can be reasonably expected to make informed decisions and who must take personal accountability for the decisions they make.” Supporters of the proposed changes say it is too easy for students to apply for loan forgiveness and that too much public money will have to be used to repay bad loans.

“To be sure, college students are indeed adults who can be reasonably expected to make informed decisions. And adults should indeed take personal accountability for the decisions they made.

“But the proposed regulation says, among other things, that to qualify for loan forgiveness, students who claim they have been defrauded have to prove the college intended to defraud them and show that the college had exhibited a “reckless disregard” for the truth.

“That is not, for example, the standard for state lemon laws, which offer compensatory remedies to consumers who buy cars and other goods that prove to be defective. They don’t insist that the consumers prove that a car dealer or manufacturer intended to commit fraud by making and selling a flawed product.

“Let’s say DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan, decided to buy a new yacht and it turned out to have a bum engine that broke down repeatedly. Would she have to prove the seller intended to defraud her to seek replacement or some kind of compensation?

“Consumer products are not college education, for sure, but the Trump administration believes in operating schools as if they were businesses, so the comparison seems apt.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt, Students

Florida Outrage! Voucher and Charter Advocates Try to Sneak Constitutional Amendment onto the Ballot to Repeal Requirement for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2018 //
25

Someone is trying to pull a fast one on the people of Florida. Voters are supposed to consider an amendment to the State Constitution that bundles several different proposals into a single amendment, to the utter confusion of voters, who will not be able to vote individually on the proposed changes.

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida filed a brief to the panel of his former colleagues, asking that they either seek justification for this bundling or toss it off the ballot.

How can it be possible to justify an effort to mislead and trick voters?

One member of the Constitutional Revision Commission was Patricia Levesque, who heads Jeb Bush’s foundation; she said that the state constitution was obsolete because it did not contemplate the creation of charter schools, online education or other innovations of the current era. Another Commission member is a charter school founder, who claimed that the current wording in the state constitution was designed to protect the “education monopoly.”

Retired Florida chief justice Harry Lee Anstead has asked his former panel to require justification for why six proposed constitutional amendments including Amendment 8 should remain on the November ballot, or to toss them out.

Anstead, joined by former Florida Elections commissioner Robert Barnas, contend in their filing to the state Supreme Court that the six proposals from the Constitution Revision Commission are unconstitutionally bundled, preventing voters from making a simple “yes” or “no” decision on them.

They challenge Amendment 8, which includes three ideas collectively grouped under education, as well as amendments 6 (rights of crime victims), 7 (first responder and military survivor benefits), 9 (offshore oil drilling and vaping), 10 (state and local government structure), and 11 (property rights).

Their key argument:

“Petitioners submit herein that each and every one of the foregoing proposed revisions bundles independent and unrelated proposals in a single ballot question in a manner that requires a voter to vote ‘yes’ for a proposal that the voter opposes in order to vote ‘yes’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter supports and to vote ‘no’ for a proposal the voter supports in order to vote ‘no’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter opposes. This is logrolling and a form of issue gerrymandering that violates the First Amendment right of the voter to vote for or against specific independent and unrelated proposals to amend the constitution without paying the price of supporting a measure the voter opposes or opposing a measure the voter supports.”

The plaintiffs recognize the CRC’s ability to propose a comprehensive revision of the state constitution. However, they argue, this would require several discrete amendments and not a single overarching one.

The CRC has instead bundled independent and unrelated items, they argue: “All are beyond the power the Constitution has bestowed upon the Constitution Revision Commission and must be removed from the ballot.”

Additionally, regarding Amendment 8, they specify that the proposal does not clearly state its intent.

“This ballot language is clearly and deceptive misleading because it does not disclose to the voter that the proposed amendment to Article IX § 4(b), adding the language ‘established by the district school board,’ eliminates the constitutional requirement in Article IX § 1(a) that Florida have a uniform …system of free public schools, which has been a continuous constitutional imperative in Florida beginning with the Constitution of 1868. This measure seeks sub silentio to subvert decisions such as Bush v. Holmes, 919 So. 2d 392 (Fla. 2006),” they write. “This subterfuge must not be perpetuated upon Florida voters.”

One senses the hand of Jeb Bush in this subterfuge.

Never forget: Dark money never sleeps.

This is a quote from the first link, dated August 14, 2018:

Retired Florida chief justice Harry Lee Anstead has asked his former panel to require justification for why six proposed constitutional amendments including Amendment 8 should remain on the November ballot, or to toss them out.

Anstead, joined by former Florida Elections commissioner Robert Barnas, contend in their filing to the state Supreme Court that the six proposals from the Constitution Revision Commission are unconstitutionally bundled, preventing voters from making a simple “yes” or “no” decision on them.

They challenge Amendment 8, which includes three ideas collectively grouped under education, as well as amendments 6 (rights of crime victims), 7 (first responder and military survivor benefits), 9 (offshore oil drilling and vaping), 10 (state and local government structure), and 11 (property rights).

Their key argument:

“Petitioners submit herein that each and every one of the foregoing proposed revisions bundles independent and unrelated proposals in a single ballot question in a manner that requires a voter to vote ‘yes’ for a proposal that the voter opposes in order to vote ‘yes’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter supports and to vote ‘no’ for a proposal the voter supports in order to vote ‘no’ for an independent and unrelated proposal the voter opposes. This is logrolling and a form of issue gerrymandering that violates the First Amendment right of the voter to vote for or against specific independent and unrelated proposals to amend the constitution without paying the price of supporting a measure the voter opposes or opposing a measure the voter supports.”

The plaintiffs recognize the CRC’s ability to propose a comprehensive revision of the state constitution. However, they argue, this would require several discrete amendments and not a single overarching one.

The CRC has instead bundled independent and unrelated items, they argue: “All are beyond the power the Constitution has bestowed upon the Constitution Revision Commission and must be removed from the ballot.”

This is the second, published April 16, 2018:

Despite calls to treat each idea separately, the Florida Constitution Revision Commission has sent a proposal to voters that would set school board member term limits, require civic education in public schools, and allow for the creation of a state charter school authorizer.

Commission member Roberto Martinez, a former State Board of Education chairman and key legal adviser to Jeb Bush, pressed the panel Monday to unbundle the package [P 6003].

The portion to give control of some public schools to an entity other than a local school board would be a “game changer” that would radically alter public education governance, Martinez argued. Voters should have a clear understanding of the proposal and then decide on its own merits — not because it’s tied to another concept, he said.

“These are three separate issues,” former state senator Chris Smith said in agreement. “I don’t even realize how I’m going to vote. I’m strong on some of it. I’m against some of it.”

The opposition reflected a growing drumbeat across Florida, where several organizations have raised concerns about the “power grab” they suggested Republican government leaders are attempting. They had a coordinated campaign in newspapers over the weekend, signaling this could likely be a most challenged ballot item, and wrote a letter to CRC chairman Carlos Beruff asking for each proposal to be taken up independently.

Beruff was among the 22 members to vote against unbundling the proposals, and among the 27 to support placing the package on the November ballot. A proposal needed 22 votes to advance.

Unlike those who suggested the measure would decimate local control of public education, supporters of the initiative said the ideas “absolutely” belong together because they are all part of Article IX.

They contended it would unshackle the Legislature in any future efforts to come up with new ideas to improve the system.

The current constitutional language of Article IX authorizes local school boards to operate, supervise and control all free public schools within their jurisdiction. The amendment would limit that authority to the schools “established by the district school board.”

That has been read by many observers as a method to allow creation of an unelected state charter school approval system, which in the past has been rejected in court because of this section of the constitution.

Commission member Patricia Levesque, who heads Jeb Bush’s education foundation, argued that a state charter authorizer is not spelled out in the proposal. Rather, Levesque said, the idea is to upgrade 50-year-old language written when Florida’s population was less than half of what it is now.

Floridians did not contemplate charter schools, online education, dual enrollment or other ideas that have emerged since. Levesque contended that new concepts face political hurdles because of the constitution, and called for the change.

Commission member Erika Donalds, a Collier County School Board member and charter school founder, said the constitution needs to be forward looking.

“When these reforms run their course, will [lawmakers] be able to respond?” asked Donalds, who is attempting to open charter schools outside Collier County.

The time has come, she suggested, to get rid of the “unfair, antiquated” wording that is used to “protect the education monopoly,” and to give parents more opportunities for school choice.

“It is our duty to take the hogtie off the Legislature,” said Donalds, whose husband serves in the state House and recently sponsored a measure to create a private school scholarship for students who claim to be bullied in public school.

Commission member Frank Kruppenbacher, a longtime lawyer for district and charter schools, rejected that the Legislature cannot make any education reforms it wishes.

“What it needs is the leadership to do it,” he said, noting all the initiatives that have been implemented over the years.

Kruppenbacher was among the 10 members to vote against the proposal. The others were Martinez, former Florida Bar president Hank Coxe, state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, State Board of Education members Tom Grady and Marva Johnson, former state Sen. Arthenia Joyner, state Sen. Darryl Rouson, Indian River County Commissioner Bob Solari, and Florida education commissioner Pam Stewart.

The ballot measure would require 60 percent voter approval to become effective.

One other education proposal, which would allow high-performing school districts to avoid certain portions of the state education code similar to charter schools, is to be considered separately. Commission Style and Drafting chairman Brecht Heuchan explained that the fourth proposal could not fit with the others and meet the wording limitations for amendments.

UPDATE: The “innovation school districts” proposal failed 13-23.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Florida, Fraud, Vouchers

Gulen-Bay Tech Charter School in Trouble Again

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2018 //
21

Recently we learned that the principal of the Bay Tech Charter School in Oakland gave himself a generous severance package of $450,000, then left for Australia.

Bay Tech is a Gulen School, connected to the reclusive Imam Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania while overseeing one of the largest charter chains in the U.S. You can tell a Gulen school by the disproportionate number of Tirkish people on its board and teaching staff. The repressive autocrat Erdogan in Turkey wants to extradite Gulen, claiming j
He fomented a failed rebellion against the government. Critics of Gulen believe he uses the money he extracts from his charter chain to subsidize his movement. I don’t know much about Turkish politics, but I wonder why Turkish citizens are taking control of American public schools, whose first obligation is to teach the duties of American citizenship.

California taxpayers are very generous indeed to those who work in the charter sector.

Now it turns out that the school has been forcing students to pay for their graduation gowns, which is illlegal, and requiring parents to buy tickets for the graduation ceremonies, which is also illegal.

You see, it’s simple. In California, laws are written to regulate public schools, not charter schools. The most powerful lobby in the state is the California Charter Schools Association, and it fights any regulation or accountability or even prohibition of conflicts of interest. And to top it off, Governor Jerry Brown vetoes any legislation that might hold charters accountable or block conflicts of interest. So charters are free not to hold open meetings, free to keep their records secret, free to give contracts to relatives, because Governor Brown protects them from transparency.

What a sad stain on an otherwise great legacy.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Gulen Charter Schools, Oakland, Privatization

Betsy DeVos: Stealing from Students to Enrich For-Profit Colleges

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
15

Is Betsy DeVos the meanest woman in America?

She has just taken the steps needed to remove protections from students defrauded by predatory for-profit “colleges.”

Like others in the despicable Trump maladministration, DeVos thinks that consumers should fend for themselves. If they get defrauded, it’s their own fault for making a bad choice.

You can see where this is going. Government protects the marketplace, not the consumers. If you happened to get suckered by slick advertising, that’s your fault. Don’t expect the government to police the marketplace. Caveat emptor is your job.

DeVos previously rolled back regulations that allowed students who were defrauded to get a refund.

“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos formally moved Friday to scrap a regulation that would have forced for-profit colleges to prove that the students they enroll are able to attain decent-paying jobs, the most drastic in a series of policy shifts that will free the scandal-scarred, for-profit sector from safeguards put in effect during the Obama era.

“In a written announcement posted on its website, the Education Department laid out its plans to eliminate the so-called gainful employment rule, which sought to hold for-profit and career college programs accountable for graduating students with poor job prospects and overwhelming debt. The Obama-era rule would have revoked federal funding and access to financial aid for poor-performing schools.

“After a 30-day comment period, the rule is expected to be eliminated July 1, 2019. Instead Ms. DeVos would provide students with more data about all of the nation’s higher education institutions — not just career and for-profit college programs — including debt, expected earnings after graduation, completion rates, program cost, accreditation and other measures.

“Students deserve useful and relevant data when making important decisions about their education post-high school,” Ms. DeVos said in a statement. “That’s why instead of targeting schools simply by their tax status, this administration is working to ensure students have transparent, meaningful information about all colleges and all programs. Our new approach will aid students across all sectors of higher education and improve accountability.”

“But in rescinding the rule, the department is eradicating the most fearsome accountability measures — the loss of federal aid — for schools that promise to prepare students for specific careers but fail to prepare them for the job market, leaving taxpayers on the hook to pay back their taxpayer-backed loans.

“The DeVos approach is reversing nearly a decade of efforts to create a tough accountability system for the largely unregulated for-profit sector of higher education. In recent years, large for-profit chains, which offer training for everything from automotive mechanics to cosmetology to cybersecurity, have collapsed under mountains of complaints and lawsuits for employing misleading and deceptive practices.

“The implosions of ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges generated tens of thousands of complaints from student borrowers who said they were left with worthless degrees. The Obama administration encouraged the expansion of public community colleges as it forgave at least $450 million in taxpayer-funded student debt for for-profit graduates who could not find decent jobs with the degrees or certificates they had earned.

“The regulations passed in the wake of those scandals remade the industry. Since 2010, when the Obama administration began deliberating the rules, more than 2,000 for-profit and career programs — nearly half — have closed, and the industry’s student population has dropped by more than 1.6 million, said Steve Gunderson, the president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the for-profit industry’s trade association.”

There is a simple principle that every student should think about: Avoid for-profit “Colleges”and “universities.”

Don’t be scammed by the next fake “Trump University.”

Categories Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

Congressman Collins and Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
7

By Now, you have probably read about Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY), who has “suspended” his campaign while promising that he would be vindicated after the FBI accused him of insider trading. He allegedly alerted his son to dump stock in a drug company whose premier drug failed clinical trials, causing the shares to drop 90% of their market value.

The story is worse than what has been widely reported.

“The three-term congressman’s infectious enthusiasm for Innate Immunotherapeutics, the tiny biotech firm, led to his indictment on Wednesday, when he and several other investors were accused of insider trading. Prosecutors said that he tipped off his son to the poor results of the company’s clinical drug trial for a notoriously intractable form of multiple sclerosis before they were public, allowing the son and others to dump their stock and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Collins sat on the company’s board until May, and at one point was its largest shareholder.

“The stock scandal has rippled through Congress, where his favorite stock tip had enticed at least seven former or current House Republicans into investing along with him, his two grown children and other friends. It provided new ammunition for Democrats seeking to take back the House, and forced Mr. Collins to announce on Saturday that he would not seek re-election to a fourth term.

“In his statement, Mr. Collins called the insider trading charges “meritless” and vowed to fight them to have his “good name cleared of any wrongdoing….”

Mr. Collins may have been the largest investor in health companies on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but one-third of its members also bought and sold biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device stocks, an analysis by The New York Times has found. Republican Representatives William Long II and Markwayne Mullin served with Mr. Collins on the panel’s health subcommittee and invested in Innate. The subcommittee weighed in on topics ranging from the Food and Drug Administration’s authority over speeding up approval of new drugs to the Affordable Care Act.

“Beyond Innate Immunotherapeutics, Mr. Collins, among the wealthiest members of Congress, has held leadership roles in other biotech companies that were little known or mentioned on Capitol Hill. Until this past week, he was chairman of the board of directors of ZeptoMetrix, a private lab company based in Buffalo that he co-founded and that has received millions of dollars in federal contracts, according to government records. He also reported owning between $25 million and $50 million in shares of the company, but has since transferred an unknown amount into his wife’s name, a company spokesman said. In June, he sold as much as $1 million of stock in Chembio Diagnostics, a medical tests and equipment manufacturer, according to his ethics disclosure forms.

“Mr. Collins did not disclose these ties in committee hearings when topics overlapped with his business interests, including the development of a test for the Zika virus and whether the F.D.A. should more closely regulate some types of lab tests. Earlier, in 2013, he brought up the experimental drug that Innate was developing in a hearing about brain research, but did not mention his financial stake in the company.

“Mr. Collins had no business serving on this publicly traded company from the get-go,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a Washington ethics watchdog organization, who noted that such a practice was not permitted in the Senate. “The House needs to update its rules.”

“Since 2012, a federal law has prevented members of Congress from trading stocks based on confidential information they receive as lawmakers. Members of both chambers are permitted to hold stocks and members of the House of Representatives may serve on boards as long as they disclose it. Generally, lawmakers don’t have to recuse themselves from a vote or other action that might affect their holdings unless they are virtually the only investor who would benefit…

“His involvement with Innate surfaced in December of 2015, and came up again during the confirmation of Tom Price for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Price’s active investment in pharmaceutical and health care stocks drew scrutiny — and calls for an investigation — from Democrats. Mr. Price divested from his stock in Innate before becoming secretary, and later resigned from his Cabinet post after his use of expensive charter flights on government trips became public.

“By comparison, little attention has been paid to Mr. Collins’s connection to ZeptoMetrix, a company he helped found in 1999 that supplies viruses, bacteria and other products to laboratories around the country.

“Mr. Collins has said that his 50-percent holdings in ZeptoMetrix are in the name of his wife and daughter. The family’s interest in the company ranges from $25 million to $50 million, according to Mr. Collins’s financial disclosure forms. They earned $1 million to $5 million in interest from ZeptoMetrix. His wife, Mary Collins, receives a salary from the company, according to the disclosure….

“A spokeswoman for Mr. Collins on Friday pointed to statements that he made during a hearing in 2016 about bioresearch labs that disclosed that he founded and led a lab company. However, Mr. Collins did not reveal during the hearing that he remained on its board, nor his ongoing financial stake.

“In January, the outgoing chief executive of ZeptoMetrix, Gregory R. Chiklis, sued the company in New York State Supreme Court, accusing the company of financial irregularities, including paying “phantom employees” annual salaries of $500,000. Mr. Chiklis also said that Mr. Collins “unilaterally” made most decisions.”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, For-Profit, Fraud

Jan Resseger: How High-Stakes Testing is Ruining Education

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
20

In this post, Jan Resseger reminds us why Daniel Koretz’s book, The Testing Charade, is essential reading.

Read this book about the failure of NCLB and Race to the Top before you listen to Arne Duncan repeat his baseless claim that we need more testing and more of what already failed.

How has high stakes testing ruined our schools and how has this strategy, which was at the heart of No Child Left Behind, made it much more difficult to accomplish No Child Left Behind’s stated goal of reducing educational inequality and closing achievement gaps?

Here is how Daniel Koretz begins to answer that question in his 2017 book, The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better: In 2002, No Child Left Behind “mandated that all states use the proficient standard as a target and that 100 percent of students reach that level. It imposed a short timeline for this: twelve years. It required that schools report the performance of several disadvantaged groups and it mandated that 100 percent of each of these groups had to reach the proficient standard. It required that almost all students be tested the same way and evaluated against the same performance standards. And it replaced the straight-line approach by uniform statewide targets for percent proficient, called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)…. The law mandated an escalating series of sanctions for schools that failed to make AYP for each reporting group.” Later, “Arne Duncan used his control over funding to increase even further the pressure to raise scores. The most important of Duncan’s changes was inducing states to tie the evaluation of individual teachers, rather than just schools, to test scores… The reforms caused much more harm than good. Ironically, in some ways they inflicted the most harm on precisely the disadvantaged students the policies were intended to help.”

Koretz poses the following question and his book sets out to answer it: “But why did the reforms fail so badly?”

I recommend Daniel Koretz’s book all the time as essential reading for anyone trying to figure out how we got to the deplorable morass that is today’s federal and state educational policy. I wish I thought more people were reading this book. Maybe people are intimidated that its author is a Harvard expert on the design and use of standardized tests. Maybe it’s the fact that the book was published by the University of Chicago Press. But I don’t see it in very many bookstores, and when I ask people if they have read it, most people tell me they intend to read it. To reassure myself that it is really worth reading, I set myself the task this past weekend of re-reading the entire book. And I found re-reading it to be extremely worthwhile.

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing
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