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Philadelphia: Superintendent is Secure, But Teachers and Students Are Not

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2015 //
2

Matthew L. Mandel, a National Board Certified Teacher in Philadelphia, is dumbfounded that Superintendent William Hite got a new contract when the district is in disarray. Please note, when you open the article, that the newspaper/website added a photograph with a caption that contradicts what Matthew wrote. In the article, he explained why it was too soon to give a new five-year contract to the Superintendent but the caption reads: “Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. deserved to have his contract extended.” The point of Matthew’s article is: No, he doesn’t.

 

Mandel writes:

 

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. referred to a recent education bill passed by the Pennsylvania Senate as a “recipe for disaster.” That phrase also describes the School Reform Commission’s decision to extend Hite’s contract by five years, with two years remaining on the original.

 

In a statement, SRC Chair Marjorie Neff said it was the right time to lock in Hite for the long term, lauding him for demonstrating “strong leadership through an extraordinarily difficult time.” I wonder if she feels the same about losing scores of superb classroom teachers who left to work somewhere they feel valued and respected, or the many more who retired because they couldn’t take the conditions and mistreatment in the School District of Philadelphia anymore.

 

Neff, a retired teacher and principal, nearly discarded 50 years of collective bargaining progress when she supported cancellation of the teachers’ contract last year. She called that decision one of the most difficult of her life. She doesn’t appear nearly as troubled, however, that a district on financial life-support has spent millions on bad contracts and the endless pursuit of judicial relief from its obligations.

 

One could argue that Hite has achieved everything he was hired to do and, thus, has earned another contract….

 

 

I’m puzzled by the apparent urgency to get this contract extension done now, with no state budget, stagnant test scores, unhealthy and deplorable conditions in school buildings, and taxpayers who believe they have no voice in education decisions. Could it be that the district was afraid of losing him? If so, it points to another troubling pattern that has festered under state control of Philadelphia’s schools.
In a district with the highest child poverty rate in America – and dedicated but demoralized employees that have gone four years without a raise – the unelected and unaccountable SRC continues to place its emphasis on meeting the needs of central office management and charter-school operators rather than of the children and educators who spend their lives in Philly’s public schools.

 

“This contract extension is just the latest example of how the SRC’s priorities don’t align with what’s important to the district’s educators, children, and caregivers. And the latest example of this dichotomy should serve as a rallying cry to return to local control of our schools.

 

“Our district educates some of the nation’s neediest children, but lacks even basic supplies and enough critical staff to compensate for the unfair hand dealt to many of our kids. Yet, the SRC has prioritized a contract extension that affords Hite the security that Philadelphia’s teachers, children, and caregivers can only dream of.”

 
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20151221_Hite_contract_deal_shows_SRC_s_misplaced_priorities.html#qubrOcQL8XRcy17G.99

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Philadelphia

Iowa: Suppose You Wanted to Kill Public Education?

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2015 //
17

Scott McLeod, a blogger in Iowa, explains how politicians are following a script that details how to kill public education. Watch what they do. The same game plan is being repeated in other states.

McLeod knows that Iowa is not the worst-hit state, but it is being targeted for privatization.

Follow the steps. See if your state is suffering the same treatment at the hands of “reformers.”

He writes:

*underfund schools so that they can’t keep up with operational costs, will struggle to meet educational mandates, and will have to reduce personnel (bonus: fewer union members!)

*maintain claims about ‘fiscal accountability’ and future revenue concerns, even when they require ignoring strong revenue generation and projections

*reduce existing revenue streams in order to bolster claims of fiscal hardship (bonus: less government!)

*employ bait-and-switch funding mechanisms that supplant rather than supplement and/or disappear at the last minute

*ignore legal requirements to timely establish school funding levels that would allow districts to adequately plan and budget

*implement new, supplemental ‘bread and circuses’ initiatives (say, STEM or financial literacy) that distract the general public from the year-to-year erosion of base school funding

*give as little policy attention as possible to the known educational needs of students who live in poverty or don’t speak English as their primary language (and thus struggle academically), even as those student and family populations increase markedly within the state

*deflect the blame for your underfunding of schools by alleging schools’ inefficiency and superintendents’ mismanagement

*frequently change state standards and assessments and/or make them more difficult so that educators and students struggle to keep up and have less chance of hitting the moving targets
use selective data (say, NAEP scores) to manufacture educational crises that feed your rhetoric of public school failure

*create school grading and ranking schemes that shame struggling schools, demoralize the educators within them, and alarm parents
implement teacher evaluation schemes that are guaranteed to be unfair, demoralize educators, and confuse the public

*pitch tax credits and private/religious school vouchers or ’scholarships’ (‘money that will follow students in their backpacks’) to the general public as natural recourses to the failures of public schools

*write legislation that expands public school alternatives such as charters or homeschooling, particularly ones that can siphon funds away from public schools

*create double-standard school and educator ‘accountability’ provisions that apply to public schools but not non-public alternatives

*accept policy proposals, money, and political influence from seemingly anyone other than actual educators
affiliate with anti-public-school organizations (say, ALEC) that will feed you ‘model’ legislation proposals, connect you with successful players and tactics from other states, and provide ongoing encouragement to stay the course

*hold yearly education summits at which educators can only listen passively to carefully-vetted speakers who feed your desired agendas

*publicly dismiss, disparage, intimidate, or try to silence educators, parents, researchers, and others who speak out against your policies

Categories Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Funding, Iowa, Privatization

New York Parents to Cuomo: Restore Our Funding!

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2015 //
17

Governor Cuomo has called himself the “students’ lobbyist,” but if so, he is not doing a good job. He has cut school budgets with a tax cap and other mechanisms. Apparently, his idea of breaking the “public school monopoly” is to starve the public schools that 90% of the children in the state attend. This letter was sent to Governor Cuomo by the PTSA of Hastings-on-Hudson:

 
Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706
℅ Lisa Eggert Litvin, Co President (917-881-3266)
hastingsonhudsonptsa@gmail.com

 

Dear Governor Cuomo:

 

We write to urge that full funding be restored to our public schools. Specifically, Foundation Aid should be paid in full to all school districts this year, and past due funds should be paid as well. In addition, funds diverted away from schools via the Gap Elimination Allowance (GEA) must be paid up, and use of the GEA must end immediately.

 

This gross underfunding all public school districts has lead to two unacceptable outcomes:

 

1. Schools statewide have been forced to cut meaningful and effective programing and staff. Class sizes have grown; language and advanced courses have been cut. Supports like summer school and after school have been cut. Positions that insure safety like bus monitors, security workers, social workers, and more have been cut or remain not fully invested. And more.

 

2. Our taxes have gone up in order to pay for the state’s shortfall. With full funding, many districts would have and should have instead seen tax decreases. As an example, had Dobbs Ferry received its full state funding in 2013-2014, it could have easily covered its budget increase of $1.5 million and avoided that year’s tax hike. But instead, the state diverted $2.25 million and Dobbs’s taxpayers were hit with a tax increase of 4.5%. (A full explanation is available at http://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/11/30/view-school-taxes-rise-state-withholds-aid/76379942/.

 

Our state is flush with funds now. During Governor Cuomo’s re-election bid, he announced that our state has a $2 billion surplus. This grew by an additional $5 billion last spring, from a legal settlement. There is no excuse whatsoever to continue shortchanging our schools and avoiding paying what has been owed over the past several years.

 

Our schools cannot handle the lack of funds — which is rightfully due to them. And our property taxpayers cannot continue to shoulder these unnecessary increases, all the cover a debt of the state, a state that promotes a surplus.

 

Sincerely,
The Hastings-on-Hudson PTSA Executive Board
Lisa Eggert Litvin and Jacqueline Weitzman, Co Presidents

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, New York

Steven Singer: Sacrificing the Children of Philadelphia to Balance the Budget

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2015 //
7

Steven Singer is a teacher in Pennsylvania. This is a moving post, and he gave me permission to post it in full. It has many links. If you want to read them, open the article.

 

 

Pennsylvania lawmakers are ready to help all students across the Commonwealth – if only they can abuse, mistreat and trample some of them.

 

Which ones? The poor black and brown kids. Of course!

 

That seems to be the lesson of a school code bill passed with bipartisan support by the state Senate Thursday.

 

The legislation would require the Commonwealth to pick as many as 5 “underperforming” Philadelphia schools a year to close, charterize or just fire the principal and half the staff. It would also allow non-medically trained personnel to take an on-line course before working in the district to treat diabetic school children. And it would – of course – open the floodgates to more charter schools!

 

It’s a dumb provision, full of unsubstantiated facts, faulty logic and corporate education reform kickbacks. But that’s only the half of it!

 

The bill is part of a budget framework agreed to by Governor Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled legislature necessary to finally pass a state-wide spending plan. The financial proposal has been held hostage for almost half a year!

 

The major sticking point has been school funding. Democrats like Wolf demand an increase. Republicans refuse. And the worst part is that the increase would only begin to heal the cuts the GOP made over the last four years.

 

Republicans just won’t clean up their own mess.

 

They slashed public school budgets by almost $1 billion per year for the last four years with disastrous consequences. Voters who could make little headway against a GOP legislature entrenched in office through gerrymandering rebelled by kicking the Republican Governor out of Harrisburg and voting in Wolf, a new chief executive who promised to support school children.

 

But for the last 5 months, the Republican-controlled legislature simply refused to spend money on – yuck – school children! Especially poor brown and black kids who rely more on state funding! Barf!

 

Finally a bargain was struck to put the money back, but only if it screws over more poor black and brown kids.

 

As usual, Philadelphia Schools are the state’s whipping boy.

 

For decades saddled with a host of social ills yet starved of resources, Philadelphia Schools simply couldn’t function on funding from an impoverished local tax base. The 8th largest school district in the country needed a financial investment from the state to make up the difference. However, in 2001 the Commonwealth decided it would only do this if it could assume control with a mostly unelected School Recovery Commission (SRC). Now after 14 years of failure, the state has decided annually to take a quintet of Philly schools away from the state and give them to – THE STATE! The State Department of Education, that is, which will have to enact one of the above terrible reforms to turn the schools around.

 

Yet each of these reforms is a bunch of baloney!

 

Hiring non-medical personnel with on-line training to treat diabetic kids!? Yes, two children died in Philly schools recently because budget cuts took away full-time school nurses. But this solution is an outrage! Try proposing it at a school for middle class or rich kids! Try proposing it for a school serving a mostly white population!

 

More charter schools!? Most new charter companies aren’t even interested in taking over Philly learning institutions. There’s no money in it! The carcass has been picked clean!

 

Privatizing public schools has never increased academic outcomes. Charter schools – at best – do no better than traditional public schools and – most often – do much worse.

 

Closing schools is a ridiculous idea, too. No school has ever been improved by being shut down. Students uprooted from their communities rarely see academic gains.

 

And firing staff because the legislature won’t provide resources is like kicking your car because you forgot to buy gas. You can’t get blood from a stone.

 

But this is what Republicans are demanding. And most of the Democrats are giving in. Every state Senator from Philadelphia voted for this plan – though reluctantly.

 

Is this really the only way to reach some kind of normalcy for the rest of the state? Do we really need to bleed Philadelphia some more before we can heal the self-inflicted wounds caused by our conservative legislators?

 

The bill includes a $100 million increase for Philadelphia Schools. But this is just healing budget cuts made to the district four years ago. Until Republicans took over the legislature, Philadelphia received this same sum from the state to help offset the vampire bite of charter schools on their shrinking budgets. Now – like all impoverished Pennsylvania schools – that charter school reimbursement is only a memory.

 

So this money only puts Philly back to where it was financially a handful of years ago when it was still struggling.

 

It’s a bad bargain for these students. Though some might argue it’s all we’ve got.

 

A sane government would increase funding to meet the needs of the students AND return the district to local control.

 

Republicans demand accountability for any increase in funding but how does this new bill do that exactly? Charter schools are not accountable to anyone but their shareholders. The School Recovery Commission has been failing for over a decade. Since most are political appointees, who are they accountable to really?

 

A duly elected school board would be accountable to residents. If voters didn’t like how they were leading the district, they could vote them out. THAT would be accountability. Not this sham blood sacrifice.

 

The state House is set to vote on this bill soon and will probably pass it, too. Maybe that’s just as well. Maybe there really is no other choice in the twisted halls of Pennsylvania politics.

 

However, let’s be honest about it. This is some classist, racist bullshit.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Reform, Funding, Philadelphia, Race

CTU: Only Two Certified Librarians Left at Virtually All African-American High Schools in Chicago

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2015 //
6

When Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence expresses outrage, it should direct its outrage towards the budget cuts that have gutted necessary services for the students in Chicago, not at the teachers’ union that is fighting for the restoration of services. Patricia Levesque, if you were a high school teacher, wouldn’t you go on strike if your students didn’t have a librarian in their school? Wouldn’t you demand a restoration of budget cuts that took away most of the city’s librarians?

 

This press release came with graphics, which I did not include. The graphics show a dramatic contrast between schools that are majority African-American, and schools that are not, in terms of their having a certified librarian. The higher the percentage of black students, the less likely is the school to have a certified librarian. For example, 75% of the schools where the enrollment is less than 50% African-American have a certified librarian; 16% of the schools with a student body that is 50-90% African-American have a certified librarian; only 9% of the schools that are 90% or more African-American have a certified librarian. Contact Stephanie Gadlin if you want to see the graphics.

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Stephanie Gadlin
December 14, 2015 312/329-6250
StephanieGadlin@ctulocal1.com

 

 

A CTU SPECIAL REPORT:

 

 

Just two certified librarians left at virtually all African-American CPS high schools

 

 

By Chicago Teachers Union Researcher Pavlyn Jankov, with assistance
from the CTU Librarians Committee

 

CHICAGO – For the last several years the CTU and the CTU Librarians Committee have been documenting the loss of professionally staffed libraries from district schools. The district’s failure to provide adequate funding has led to position closures, shifted librarians into classroom positions and left in disuse libraries that have been painstakingly built and supplied by their teachers. Constant funding precarity has also pushed out experienced and veteran librarians to seek other opportunities.

 

In 2012, 67 out of 97 schools had a dedicated certified teacher staffed as a librarian. After three years, half those high school librarians lost their positions or left their schools. This year, the proportion is reversed with just a third of all high schools having a librarian.

 

With the district’s implementation of student-based budgeting alongside deep budget cuts, and its continued reckless expansion of charter schools, CPS’ lack of support for neighborhood schools has led to enrollment losses and severe budget cuts across high schools. Segregated Black schools on the South and West sides have been hit especially hard, and when it comes to access to school libraries, the disparity has become startling.

 

The number of librarians staffed at high schools with a student population greater than 90% African American with a librarian on staff has dropped 84%, from 19 schools in 2012 to just 2 this year, at Chicago Vocational Career Academy, and Morgan Park High School. Across the 46 high schools with a majority African American student population, just 15% have librarians, and across the 28 high schools with an African American student population above 90%, just 7% do. In comparison, the dismal rate of librarian access across all CPS high schools is 32%. Such a deep disparity did not exist several years ago. In the 2012-2103 school year, 61% of high schools with a majority of African American students had a certified librarian on staff, compared to 69% across all district high schools.

 

LIBRARIANS RE-ASSIGNED TO FILL TEACHER SHORTAGE

 

Some schools that have library rooms without librarians actually still have librarians – but they are assigned as full-time classroom teachers. In 2013, 58 librarians were shifted into non-librarian positions. A librarian at a southwest-side high school reports that while her school has had a vibrant and collaborative library program that circulated over 9,000 books to students last year, her duties now include teaching several English classes. However, she felt lucky, as she has had an assistant, and managed to keep the library going with funding and grants.

 

Librarians are indispensable to not just students, but to fellow educators. Coworkers of Ms. Tamela Chambers, a librarian at CVCA – one of the few remaining librarians in a south-side neighborhood high school, described how invaluable it is to work with her: “We continue to challenge each other with projects that stretch our creativity. Working with Ms. Chambers literally leaves me ‘jumping at the bit’. I can’t wait to finish one project so that I can get into the next one.” At CVCA, they have collaborated over student projects for newscasts, documentaries presented at the Chicago Metro History Fair, service learning projects, children’s books on food deserts, collecting songs for use in AP U.S. History. Facilitating such projects are so important, Tamela said, because “libraries bridge the gap between academia and personal interests; a crucial connection that makes learning meaningful and relevant”.

 

Records indicate that CVCA has had a certified-librarian staffed for at least the last 15 years, a duration that many other south side high schools also shared until the last several years of budget cuts. This week, the librarian at DHW, housed at the DuSable school campus along with Bronzeville Scholastic Academy and the Dusable Leadership Academy, was notified that her position was closing. With the closure of the DuSable Library, a library that has been in continuous existence since the start of the historic DuSable school, the district shuts down the only functioning library staffed with a fully-certified librarian in a Bronzeville neighborhood high school. Sara Sayigh, the veteran librarian who received the layoff notice, explains the historic importance of school libraries: “Since 1936, DuSable has always had a librarian and during most of the time, more than one. This historic Black school is the alma mater of Harold Washington, Nat King Cole, Ella Jenkins, Timuel Black and many, many others. The library in this school always has given a sense of community to the building and it still does today. When you remove a librarian, you remove an entire service, and take something essential away from the whole building. At my school, it’s connected to the sense of the greater community.”

 

BY THE BOOK: CPS IS BROKE ON PURPOSE

 

Total funding for libraries across district schools has shrunk again this year, down to just $24 million, a cut of 20% from last year’s $30 million. The precarity of the CPS budget constantly weighs on teachers. K.C. Boyd, a veteran and celebrated certified librarian formerly at Phillips Academy left CPS this past summer to run the libraries program across the East St Louis school district. In CPS she faced a situation familiar to many veteran educators of subjects that are not considered by central office as core curriculum with dedicated funding – annual uncertainty of a continued position. She said “I had experienced a position closing on me in 2009 and vowed that I would never go through that again… This was a painful decision because this was the first high school library I was assigned, I had re-built the library from scratch, developed an awesome collection through grants and donations and turned non-readers at Phillips into readers.”

 

K.C. was one of several Chi School Librarians activists who met with former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett last year to advocate for library funding and more teacher representation in curriculum development. She recounted how at the end of the meeting, it was apparent that CPS was not committed to their library programs: “Dr. Byrd-Bennett said that the projected figures for next school year looked grim along with our positions. She paused and looked all of us sitting at the table in the eye when she said that. I caught that message loud and clear.”

 

K.C. is happy in her new role managing and re-building a library program for East St. Louis schools, and she expressed concern that CPS has not prioritized libraries, especially in communities that have suffered disinvestment: “I think it is appalling that the south side of Chicago, in particular greater Bronzeville, the home of the Black Migration from the South has so few sitting certified librarians.”

 

The Chicago Teachers Union is committed to fighting for sustainable resources for CPS, for the district to re-prioritize our neighborhood high schools, and for dedicated funding for a certified librarian at every school.

Categories Budget Cuts, Chicago, Education Reform, Funding, Libraries

Report: “The Committee to Scam New York”

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
2

Over a century ago, a young teacher named Margaret Haley became active in the Chicago Teachers Federation. She and other members of the Federation became outraged by a proposal that would impose business practices on the schools and institute a new salary plan that favored mostly male high school teachers over mostly female elementary teachers. They organized and defeated the proposal.

 

In 1899, Haley led a campaign for better funding of the Chicago schools. She brandished tax records of the city’s biggest businesses, showing that they were not paying their fair share. As a result of her exposé, corporate taxes were raised as was school funding.

 

Margaret Haley is today recognized as a founder of the teachers’ union movement.

 

But some things never change. I recently received a copy of a report published in 2011 by a group called the Public Accountability Initiative. The report lists the businesses and individuals who have contributed to a campaign (“The Committee to Save New York”) to keep taxes low while their own corporations benefit from tax benefits and tax avoidance. The report refers to these corporations and individual s as the “Committee to Scam New York.”

 

The report shows how the Committee to Save New York is a coalition of many different pro-business, anti-tax lobbies. It also shows that its members have benefited by tax breaks and tax avoidance. The consequences: vast wealth for the rich, unemployment and poverty for everyone else.

 

Margaret Haley would have been delighted–and outraged–by this report.

Categories Equity, Funding, New York

Who Funded the Opposition to Spending More on Education in Mississippi? (Hint: Can You Spell K-O-C-H?)

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
11

Mississippians went to the polls recently to vote on Initiative 42, which required the state legislature to fully fund the public schools. The initiative failed.

 

Who funded the opposition to Initiative 42?

 

Not Mississippians. According to this account of the post-campaign financial filings, 75% of the money to fight Initiative 42 came from outside Mississippi.

 

Here is a report on the scoundrels that don’t want to spend another penny on the education of children in Mississippi. How about those Koch brothers! They are billionaires, yet they put up nearly a quarter of a million dollars to block any increase in funding the education of children in Mississippi! What’s up with those guys? Why do national Republican PACs fight the fair funding of little children? Why is this an issue for them? I don’t get it. Here is an example of deceptive labeling: a group called “KidsFirst Mississippi” accepted the Koch money to oppose funding education for the kids. It should rename itself “KidsLast Mississippi” in the spirit of accurate advertising.

 

The article says:

 

Post-election campaign filings are revealing that opponents of Initiative 42, mostly from outside the state, spent much more money to defeat it than they were required to report before the polls closed. Initiative 42 would have changed the Mississippi Constitution to force the Legislature to follow state law and fully fund education or be subject to judiciary consequences. Campaign-finance reports for registered PACs and PICs were due on Nov. 10 for committee spending in October.

 

The Improve Mississippi Political Initiative Committee is the PIC that primarily ran the “No on 42” campaign with TV ads and a website, promoting fear that one (presumably black) judge in Hinds County would control education funding if 42 passed. Records filed Nov. 10 show the group spent $844,750 to defeat the citizen ballot.

 

About 82 percent of that money came from one donor: the RSLC Mississippi PAC, which is the state PAC arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee, a Washington, D.C.-based 527 political organization dedicated to “elect down-ballot, state-level Republican leaders.”

 

The RSLC Mississippi PAC gave $600,000 to the Improve Mississippi PIC in October, the PIC’s October campaign-finance report showed. Because RSLC Mississippi PAC did not donate to individual candidates in this election cycle, the PAC was not required to file reports, Secretary of State spokeswoman Pamela Weaver wrote in an email to the Jackson Free Press.

 

However, the RSLC Mississippi PAC’s latest report shows that it also donated $30,000 to The Watchdog PAC and $100,000 to the Mississippi House Republican Caucus PAC in September. The Watchdog PAC’s October campaign finance report reveals $100,000 in year-to-date donations from the RSLC Mississippi PAC on Oct. 9.

 

The Watchdog PAC then donated $90,000 to the Improve Mississippi PIC on Oct. 14, 19 and 27. If the Watchdog PAC used RSLC’s donation to fund its Improve MS PIC donation, which is unclear, the Republican State Leadership Committee gave $690,000 of the $844,750 donations used to defeat Initiative 42 through the PIC.

 

The Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to requests for phone interviews, but instead provided emailed statements. RSLC is a national organization that focuses on state-level Republican leadership, largely through individual PAC arms for states. Funding for the 527 comes from several large, national corporations. According to 2014 Open Secrets data, RSLC’s top donors last year included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Reynolds American, Las Vegas Sands and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who together donated more than $6 million. Walmart Stores and Koch Industries were also on the top-10 highest donor list.

 

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers’ national advocacy organization, donated $239,097 to the KidsFirst Mississippi PAC, the other prominent anti-42 PAC, which placed radio, Facebook, Google and other media ads against Initiative 42, campaign-finance records show. The KidsFirst PAC only reported spending $123,193 on its October campaign-finance report.

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Mississippi

A Guide to Social Impact Bonds

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2015 //
2

“In the Public Interest” is an organization dedicated to warning the public about the dangers of privatizing public services.

 

It has written a guidebook to explain to citizens what Social Impact Bonds are, how they work, who they benefit, and why they are dangerous for our society.

 

Shar Habibi, ITPI’s director of research, writes:

 

“Our guide is a must-read for any citizen or decision-maker trying to understand these new financing structures. It will help you ask tough questions to ensure that private dollars don’t create perverse incentives, fail to serve the neediest cases (also known as ‘creaming’), or distort measures of success for our most important social services.

“Ultimately, Pay for Success ignores the deeper cause of many of our growing social problems: underinvestment in the public interest. America desperately needs more investment in all our public services. Prevention-focused public funding of critical public services—like pre-K for all children and help for juveniles who end up in the criminal justice system—is our simplest and least expensive solution.”

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization

Who Funds Jeb Bush’s Education Foundation?

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2015 //
5

It is common knowledge that Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence supports charters, vouchers, and digital learning. When he announced his run for the GOP nomination, he stepped down and brought in Condaleeza Rice to lead FEE.

 

Who provided the money to showcase Bush’s education platform? Bush released his list of donors from 2007-14.

 

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Big-time donors to a nonprofit educational group founded by Jeb Bush, disclosed for the first time Wednesday, highlight the intersection between Bush’s roles in the worlds of business, policy and politics years before he began running for president….

After leaving the Florida governor’s office in 2007, Bush formed the Foundation for Excellence in Education, with a mission “to build an American education system that equips every child to achieve their God-given potential.” With Bush serving as president, the group attracted $46 million from donors through 2014.

That donor list shows the circular connections as Bush moved from governor to education advocate to corporate board member. Supporters in each of those stages of his career contributed to his educational foundation — which, in turn, sometimes supported causes benefiting its donors. They include Rupert Murdoch’s media giant News Corp., GOP mega-donor Paul Singer’s foundation, energy companies such as Exxon Mobil, even the Florida Lottery….

 

“If you wanted access to Jeb Bush, one of the ways to do it is to make a large donation to one of those foundations,” said Bill Allison, who until recently was a senior fellow with the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for open government…

 

“Records show:

—Four companies and nonprofits that appointed Bush to their boards of directors or advisory boards backed the educational foundation. One, Bloomberg Philanthropies, was among the most frequent supporters, making seven donations worth between $1.2 million to $2.4 million. Bush served on Bloomberg’s board from 2010-14. He also served on the boards of Jackson Healthcare, Rayonier Inc. and an affiliate of CNL Bank, each of which gave a lesser amount to the foundation.

 

—Bush’s education nonprofit provided $1.1 million in public information grants to eight states in 2013, its tax form shows. In recent years, at least nine charter school and education-related donors to the Foundation for Excellence in Education won contracts in those eight states, revealing the mirrored missions of donors and the foundation.

 

—The most frequent individual donor to Bush’s group was Florida citrus grower Bill Becker and his wife, Mary Ann Becker, who made eight donations worth between $225,008 and $450,000. A longtime Bush family supporter, Becker once provided Jeb Bush the use of his Cessna airplane for campaign travel….

 

—Major corporations backed Bush with big money. The most generous organization was the Walton Family Foundation, formed by Wal-Mart’s founders, which gave from $3.5 million to more than $6 million. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Wal-Mart Foundation gave $35,002 to $80,000 more. Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ foundation gave between $3 million and more than $5 million. Murdoch’s News Corp. made three contributions, at $500,001 to $1 million apiece. The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, built from the family real estate empire, gave more than $2 million.

 

—Total donations steadily increased over time, going from a 2007 maximum of $335,000 to $8.4 million in 2011 and as much as $12.2 million in 2014.

Education outfits such as Charter Schools USA, the publishing and education company Pearson PLC and Renaissance Learning were frequent contributors. So were financial groups and big businesses, with the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation giving from $1.6 million to $3.25 million and the SunTrust Bank Foundation $300,003 to $750,000. Exxon Mobil Corp., Duke Energy and BP America made nine contributions combined.”

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Bloomberg, Michael, Bush, Jeb, Education Reform, Funding, Pearson, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Chicago: Facing Doomsday Choices

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2015 //
11

The Chicago public schools have absorbed cuts and layoffs and now faces a new crisis point. With a $500 budget deficit, the city is looking to the state to avoid the loss of thousands of teachers’ jobs.

John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat and president of the State Senate, has proposed a compromise that the mayor supports, the governor supports, virtually everyone supports….but the Chicago Teachers Union.

He says it will avoid a strike and layoffs.

Why does the union oppose it? The bill eliminates the current funding system without proposing a new one to teplace it.

““Three-eighteen is not about stopping a strike. Three-eighteen is about destroying our school system,” said Stacy Davis Gates, the legislative coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union.

“Davis Gates is referring there to something Cullerton himself wants the bill to accomplish. Along with peppering Senate Bill 318 with things like a property tax freeze to get Gov. Bruce Rauner in, and teacher pension payments for Emanuel, Cullerton added a remake of the state’s school funding formula–one of his own major goals. He says under the way state government currently gives money to schools, poor districts like Chicago don’t get the money they should and wealthier districts are getting more than they should.

“So Cullerton’s bill puts an expiration date on the current way Illinois funds schools. In effect, he says he wants to end a bad system to make way for a better one. But Davis Gates with the Teachers Union says the union has a big problem with that. You can’t end school funding first coming up with a way to replace it, she argues.

“This bill, again, is irresponsible,” she said. “You cannot say that we are providing a solution to a problem when you eliminate the entire revenue stream to the school district.”

“The teachers union also wants big things that aren’t in Cullerton’s bill, like a new income tax system and an elected Chicago school board. In the meantime, the clock is ticking on Chicago Public Schools. District leaders say they have only a few months before cuts will be necessary – right in the middle of the school year.”

Categories Chicago, Funding
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