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Philadelphia: “Abbott Elementary” and the Real Story Behind Charters

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2023 //
18

Peter Greene turned his blog over to an experienced journalist who covered education in Philadelphia for years. What’s the real story behind the outraged reaction by the charter lobby to “Abbott Elementary”?

Bill Hangley, Jr., is a free lance writer who worked the education beat in Philadelphia, and as such he has some thoughts about the charter scene in Philly as reflected through recent episodes of Abbott Elementary. I’m pleased to present his guest post on the subject.

Hangley writes:

America’s school-choice lobby can relax: when ABC’s Abbott Elementary returns this Wednesday [April 5], the plot will hinge on teacher qualifications, not charter school takeovers.

That’s good news for a community that’s used to being taken seriously – very seriously. Wherever charter supporters go, they usually have friends to defend their interests. But the choice lobby wasn’t represented in the Abbott writers’ room. Nobody stood in the way as the hit sitcom raked charters over the comedy coals, presenting them as cynical, counterproductive, and even absurd.

Unsurprisingly, the charter lobby didn’t like what America saw. “No one likes being vilified,” said Debbie Veney of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “It’s pathetic … to criticize the schools that succeed,” tweeted Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform.

As a journalist who covered Philadelphia’s charters for years, I expected to see people like Veney and Allen vigorously defend their industry. That’s what they’re paid to do.

I just wish somebody would pay them to take a good hard look in the mirror. Because as merciless as the sitcom’s portrayal of district-charter relations may have been, to me it looked far more accurate than charter supporters care to admit.

Admittedly, some might say I’m biased. As a reporter for WHYY News and the late, great Public School Notebook, I saw the ugly up close. In over a decade on the beat, I saw politicians meddle and school boards dissemble. I saw underperforming charters stay open while district-run schools shut down. I heard officials beg repeatedly for relief from costly charter payments that drain district budgets.

And I saw the real-life versions of the charter takeover featured in Abbott’s recent episodes. The sitcom version was funny. The real-life version was downright cruel.

In what our school district dubbed the “Renaissance” process, Philadelphia asked school communities to pick sides and fight it out. What America just saw on television, I saw a decade ago in places like Steel Elementary and Muñoz-Marín Elementaryand Wister Elementary and Martin Luther King High.

It was brutal. Parents were asked to choose between imperfect schools they knew and blue-sky promises from well-dressed “providers” they’d never met. The resulting campaigns were every bit as impassioned and intrigue-riddled as any other Philadelphia election. I did my best to cover them fairly, and interviewed countless parents. Plenty were willing to consider a charter, for plenty of reasons.

But the question that came up most often: “If our school’s not good enough, why don’t they just fix our school?”

I had no answer, and the School District of Philadelphia never really did either.

That’s what rings the most true for me about Abbott’s charter episodes: the underlying absurdity of offering “choice” as a solution to an underfunded system. How do you fix one school by opening another? Especially when the old schools have to pay for new ones?

Please open the link and read the rest of his piece about how deeply ingrained charters have become in Philadelphia. it’s no laughing matter, in light of how neglected and underfunded the public schools are.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, Funding, Humor, Philadelphia

Pennsylvania: Urban Superintendents Call for Charter Reform, End to Unfunded Mandates

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2023 //
8

The superintendents in 29 districts near Philadelphia joined to call for charter funding reform and an end to unfunded mandates.

With a new governor, state budget hearings underway and a court ruling on their side, superintendents from 29 urban school districts held press conferences Tuesday to call attention to the need for charter reform, inequities and school safety in urban schools.

Five Philadelphia-area superintendents spoke at Upper Darby High School as part of the caucus of Pennsylvania League of Urban Schools press conference, to call attention to the need for charter reform and funding inequities that are dramatically impacting children who attend urban schools.

The 29 districts teach over 300,000 students in the state.

Christopher Dormer, superintendent of Norristown Area School District and president of the PLUS caucus, said superintendents were speaking for students who have been underfunded and underserved for far too long.

Putting a face to one of those students, Dormer spoke about first grader Estefania, one of 140 students identified as an English learner. Her school has only three English language development teachers to help in 25 classrooms.

Dormer said his district has more than 1,550 English learners, a population that has grown by 104% in the past 10 years. The district has 31 professional staff members, with 50 students for each certified teacher.

Dormer said the district has been funded in an unconstitutional manner and districts like his have had to make difficult financial choices over the past 20 years. He said those choices have led to cutting staff, curtailing programs and raising local property taxes just to survive.

Dormer noted that when districts do receive funding outcomes are different. Over the past two years, his district has received $8 million in additional funding through the program Level Up.

“This has allowed us to significantly reverse the trend of cutting positions over the decade,” Dormer said. “Just these past two years we’ve added back 60 new staff positions … to reduce class size at all levels and we were able to hire reading specialists for the first time to serve our elementary schools.”

His district has seen an increase in reading proficiency thanks to the increased funding, but it is still shortchanged by $10 million a year.

Dormer also took aim at charter school funding and noted that more than 92% of the 500 school boards statewide have adopted resolutions supporting reform to Pennsylvania’s charter school law.

“If that doesn’t say bipartisan support, I don’t know what does,” Dormer said. “This isn’t about choice, this isn’t about competition, and this is about a charter funding formula that boosts the payment of cyber charter tuition and special education tuition significantly above the real costs that are incurred by charter and cyber charter schools to provide educational and specialized services.”

Unfunded mandates

Dr. Dan McGarry, Upper Darby superintendent agreed, saying forced cuts and reduction of public education, an increase in unfunded mandates along with the rise and expansion of cyber charter schools significantly altered public education in the state beginning in the mid-2000s.

McGarry said at one point districts were reimbursed by the state for the tuition cost of charter schools but that was changed. He said that the cost is over $8 million in Upper Darby to the budget and the district sends out $11 million to charter schools.

The overwhelming majority of students in Pennsylvania are enrolled in public schools, but the legislature lavishes funding on charters and Cybercharters.

Either the legislators don’t care about the future of their state or they got big campaign donations from the billionaire charter funders or Cybercharter lobbyists.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Funding, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Missouri: GOP Votes to Defund Public Libraries

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2023 //
28

Republicans in Missouri, ascendant in the Legislature, voted to defund public libraries in the state because librarians objected to censorship and filed a lawsuit. There are 399 public libraries in the state. The bill has not yet been approved by the State Senate yet, so there’s a chance that the cuts might be reversed. PEN reported that nearly 300 books have already been withdrawn from circulation in response to censors.

Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.

That will teach them a lesson! Reading is dangerous! Stay home and watch unfiltered porn on your computer, and you don’t need to learn any new words. Why read a book when you can get the real deal at home and be completely illiterate?

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Extremism, Funding, Librarians, Libraries, Missouri, Stupid

Chicago: Vote for Brandon Johnson for Mayor

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2023 //
3

Julie Vassilatos, a parent activist and blogger in Chicago, writes here about the case for Brandon Johnson. She and others have written passionately against Paul Vallas, but here she explains why Brandon Johnson is well prepared to serve as Mayor. Because of his knowledge and experience, he not only knows the city’s budgetary issues well, but he is able to address the root causes of crime and the real needs of students.

She writes:

Friends, so many of us have been carrying on about the dangers of Paul Vallas so incessantly, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s running for mayor of Chicago unopposed.

But Vallas does have an opponent—one who is talented, thoughtful, experienced, and a real true Chicagoan raising his family on the west side: Brandon Johnson.

Johnson is getting a lot of heat from Vallas and his supporters right now. No lesser a personage than Darren Bailey, defeated far-right candidate for IL governor and unofficial endorser of Vallas, has announced that if Johnson is elected, it will be a “dark day” for Chicago. Yes. A dark day indeed. Get it?

I’m pretty sure Darren Bailey fans get it.

Then there’s FOP president/disgraced cop John Catanzara, who foresees that 1000 cops will walk off the job if Johnson wins, and there will be blood in the streets.

Vallas himself, who routinely speaks of Johnson in kind of Godzilla terms, has called him and the CTU a destructive force wreaking devastation on the city.

In addition to its coded race language, this election has rather inflated rhetoric.

I’m trying to keep mine toned down, or at least backed up by evidence. While it’s hard to pin “generational” devastation on Johnson or the CTU, it’s actually possible to do this for Vallas. He has set many destructive policies in motion in urban areas globally that have left decades of harm in their wake. Also financial calamity. But I and many others have told you all this over and over again. And this post is not about that guy.

This post is about Brandon Johnson.


Truth to tell, at the outset of the race I was slow to warm up to Johnson the candidate. But then I remembered that he was at the front lines of a struggle I will never forget—the 2013 mass school closures. So many folks did all we could do to try and stop that, well, generationally damaging policy. And those who led the way in that effort? I’d probably follow them into a fire.

But what about Brandon Johnson now? What are his credentials? Haven’t you, like me, read all that stuff about how he has no experience? How he’s never managed a budget? How he seems (unfathomably) to like crime and together with CTU wants our city to be unsafe, because….because….well, because reasons?

Well, maybe we need to look a little deeper than the media/social media blah blah blah.

In a recent mayoral forum Vallas asserted that “Brandon has run nothing.” Since Vallas hasn’t really lived here much I guess he may not know that Johnson has served on the Cook County Board of Commissioners since 2018 and has managed a great deal, including the $8.75B Cook County budget. The Cook County Board has wide ranging responsibilities, and if you’ve always wondered but never known what the Board does, you should take this time to educate yourself, starting at the Cook County Board website. Here’s a basic summary:

The Cook County Board of Commissioners oversees County operations and approves the budget of elected County officials including the Assessor, Board of Review Commissioners, County Clerk, Clerk of the Circuit Court, Recorder of Deeds, Sheriff, States Attorney and Treasurer.

The Commissioners also serve as the Board of the Cook County Forest Preserve District, a special purpose taxing district. The Board also sets policy, levies taxes, passes ordinances, approves all county purchases over $10,000, and adopts the annual budget for the entire county government.

That 2023 Cook County Budget was praised by the Civic Federation:

The Civic Federation supports the Cook County FY2023 Executive Budget Recommendation of $8.75 billion because it reflects strong financial management and puts the County in a good position moving forward post-pandemic. The County’s FY2023 proposed budget includes a strong level of reserves and positive revenue projections, without any increases in taxes or fees.

The budget gap is smaller than it’s been in years, supplemental payments to the pension fund have been made for the eighth year in a row, and the County’s fiscal position is “strong…following robust revenue performance and built-up reserves.” And observe that there are in this budget, no tax increases. (Here I note we can be grateful to Board President Toni Preckwinkle who has shepherded this budget for 13 years. And I note further, she has endorsed Johnson.)

Now let’s review the budgets Vallas has overseen.

In Philadelphia, Vallas managed a $2B budget and left a surprise $73M deficit on his way out the door. In the Louisiana Recovery District his budget was $176M. He got an extra $1.8B to work with from FEMA, and before he was done with the NOLA job he wandered repeatedly over to Haiti, missing weeks at a time of work in New Orleans (that’s beside the point, but I just thought you should know). And in Bridgeport CT, his budget was $232M. Of course he was pushed out of that job before he could really do much financial damage there.

For those of you keeping score, Vallas hasn’t ever drafted, managed, or implemented a budget even close to the size that Brandon Johnson has worked with as a member of the Cook County Board.

Before his County Board days, Johnson was a teacher. He taught middle school social studies at Jenner from 2007 to 2010 (years when most of his students were able to watch, right from school windows, wrecking balls demolishing their homes as the city brought down public housing), and then at Westinghouse for a year. He then became a CTU organizer and the leader of its Black Caucus. In those years he had a front row view on lots of turmoil in the district: school closures and turnarounds via the failed Renaissance 2010 initiative, the loss of Black teachers in the classroom as a result of closures and CPS policy choices, the 2012 teacher strike, the 2013 mass school closures, a churn of district CEOs, some of whom ended up in prison, illegal special education cuts, and rapid charter expansion.

While Johnson was organizing teachers and collaborating with parents in response to district policies that were crushing schools and services (and I do mean that literally, with at least one occasion of bulldozers bringing down a school library on a day when parents were instead expecting a meeting), he lived the experience of the folks who’ve been at the mercy of “education reform” for decades. He saw first hand what disinvestment has done to CPS students—resulting in teacher cuts, special ed cuts, after-school cuts, nursing cuts, and the whittling away of libraries, down to only 90 remaining in a total of 513 schools. He’s seen the violent legacy of closing the community anchor that is a public school. He’s watched, along with all of us, poor choices at the top—everything from grifting, self-dealing, and bribery, to no-bid contracts and cronyism—and how those things bust budgets and destroy trust. He stood with community members on a hunger strike to save a school, then joined in it himself. He’s seen the negative academic and social impacts of excessive testing, privatization, and vouchers. He’s seen these things from the perspective of 25,000 teachers and hundreds of thousands of public school families.

Vallas, meanwhile, has been the man who set those policies. He set them in motion right here in Chicago in 1995, and traveled the country and globe continuing to implement them from then until now.

He may talk a good game about Doing It All For The Children, but the fact of the matter is, Vallas has never had to stick around and watch the long term impacts of his policy decisions on The Children. Those impacts have caused years of student protests in Chile. Have kept special ed kids struggling for spots in schools in New Orleans. Have left Philadelphia in “constant crisis mode.” Led directly to our own CPS budget crisis.

Brandon Johnson has large scale urban management experience with a Board that’s closing budget gaps and overseeing a vast array of county services. He manages a bigger budget right now than Vallas ever has. And Johnson has face-to-face, personal experience with the folks who live and work and raise their children in Chicago. His years as a teacher and with CTU have given him the perspective of individuals and families on a hyper-local basis. His work has encompassed both the broad span of countywide planning and management, and the particular lens on particular people and particular struggles.

Brandon Johnson is obviously qualified for the job.

You can check out how his qualifications and vision work themselves into a platform on his website. It’s practical and passionate and outlines a vision for the city that benefits everyone, even those struggling folks who never seem to catch a break from city leaders.

Johnson understands we cannot solve violence without dealing with its root causes; more policing, surveilling, and arresting alone won’t do the trick. We can’t fix the schools without listening to communities, parents, and educators; we must reject the failed status quo of Vallas’s “education reform.” And we can’t expect our teachers and police to solve poverty and homelessness all on their own.

The choice we have before us, it seems to me, is whether we’re going to listen to the incessant hype about a “fix-it man”—who has never fixed anything. Or dig a little deeper ourselves and see that the mayor we need has been here all along, working to make our city better for his entire career, with poise and passion.

Are we going to listen to voices that allude to “dark days” and blood baths in the streets? Or are we going to listen to a man who has a vision for his city rooted in love and practical experience?

You pick, Chicago.

Categories Accountability, Character, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Community Schools, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Funding, Supporting public schools, Vallas, Paul

John Thompson: Why Are Big Corporations Avoiding Oklahoma?

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2023 //
9

Historian and retired teacher John Thompson updates us on the toxic MAGA politics that is undermining the state’s economy and the future of the state.

Republican politicians are competing to see who can be more extremist, more MAGA than the other far-right zanies. Although an unreleased poll conducted by a Republican pollster found that Oklahomans are overwhelmingly opposed to vouchers, the Governor, the state commissioner of education, and legislators are competing to see who can offer the biggest voucher and who is most indifferent to public schools. Quality of education is a lure for corporations; indifference is not.

Similarly, MAGA Republicans are competing to denounce corporations that are committed to socially responsible policies regarding ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance). Corporations don’t usually like government interfering in their internal policy making, especially those attempting to present a public face of social responsibility.

Thompson writes:

Monday marked the beginning of the second half of the Oklahoma legislative session. The first half was largely dominated by the MAGAs rhetoric, and led by Gov. Kevin Stitt, Secretary of Education Ryan Walters, and the House leader Charles McCall, as they tried to be tougher than Ron DeSantis and the other extremists. But the top headlines, recently, have shifted to the state’s failure to persuade Panasonic and Volkswagen to make major investments in Oklahoma.

On National Public Radio, Sen. Pro Temp Greg Treat sounded like a timid version of old school, adult Republicans. Treat seemed to be pushing back on the $300 million House voucher bill (called a tax credit), saying we need to protect funding for the 90% of students who will remain in public schools. But, the House bill then advanced in the Senate Education Committee with 100% of Republican votes. Perhaps the timid nature of Treat’s comments about pushing back on the House’s demands foreshadowed the Senate increase in the size of tax credits (vouchers) by 50% per student.

Although the Senate committee increased the size of the teacher pay raise, it also provided steps towards Ryan Walters’ merit pay for 10% of educators, which would promote even more of a reward and punish school culture.

Democrat Sen. Julia Kirt explained that the private school tax credit cap is $250,000 which is almost ten times as great as the average Oklahoma wage. Only 3% of taxpayers would hit that limit, so “almost any Oklahoman could claim $7,500 tax credit for private school.”

Moreover, education supporter Greg Jennings gave examples of two private religious schools that are being constructed which could undermine the survival of two rural districts (serving 3,800 students combined). Even when the goal was $5,000 vouchers, these religious schools showed how private schools could be replicated, with serious negative consequences, in rural areas. The plan is to expand from pre-k to 8th grade by 2024. Students would be taught a “Christian Based Education.”

In other words, the MAGA culture wars may have undermined corporate investments seeking to create good-paying, 21st century jobs, but vouchers could spark a boom in Christian Nationalism.

Then, Treat addressed the loss of the Volkswagen plant to Canada and called for a study as to why it happened. He compared it to the bipartisan study which launched Oklahoma City’s growth in the 1990s after United Airlines rejected the city’s bid because of our lack of social, cultural and educational institutions. As the Oklahoman’s Ben Felder reported, despite a $700 million incentive, Volkswagen chose to invest in Canada with its “strong ESG practices,” rather than the mindset expressed by Jonathan Small, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs’president:

Not only do ESG policies penalize energy production to prop up “green’ companies, but they also pressure businesses to take stances on non-economic issues such as redefining gender, promoting Critical Race Theory, and abortion tourism.

Surely, even the most extreme MAGAs know that those beliefs would make investors cautious about coming to Oklahoma after the state’s “Legislature and governor banned state investment funds from working with companies that utilize ESG policies.” After all, Stitt had said, “don’t expect support from us unless you reject ESG.”

Neither would investors be encouraged by State Treasurer Todd Russ, who “issued letters to more than 160 companies giving them an April 1 deadline to confirm they don’t ‘boycott energy companies.’” Russ further explained:

I took office on January 9 and began compiling a list of companies, banks, and other entities that act against Oklahoma’s interests because of their ESG stance. … It is my responsibility to ensure Oklahomans’ tax dollars will not be used to enrich organizations that act counter to our taxpayers’ interests and our values.

Getting back to Monday’s education debate, Democratic Sen. Carri Hicks said, “We’re asking taxpayers to fund a second school system when we haven’t funded the first.” She then explained, “Struggling schools mirror struggling communities. Oklahoma legislature has ignored the urgent need to address the 60 percent of Oklahoma’s children who live in poverty in our public schools.” Then she closed with a message that Treat should understand. “When we are looking at removing additional funding that could be invested in all of our kids’ futures — I think this is a misstep.”

And this brings back Treat’s call for remembering the lessons learned in the 1990s after Oklahoma City lost in the effort to attract 1,000 United Airlines jobs. During the deindustrialization spurred by the Reagan administration’s Supply Side Economics, Oklahoma received national and international attention for scandals ranging from the bank and saving and loans collapses; the Housing and Urban Development and County Commissioners scandals; and corruption in juvenile justice, prison, and county jails. Even the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce acknowledged that Oklahoma City “was a really destitute place to live.”

It took a two-pronged, collective response to turn Oklahoma City around. The first was bipartisan campaigns to raise taxes and rebuild abandoned neighborhoods; invest in parks, libraries, and sports and cultural institutions; and invest in public schools. As Sam Anderson of the New York Times Magazine explained:

After all of that sacrifice — the grind of municipal meetings and penny taxes and planning boards, the dust and noise and uncertainty of construction, the horror of 1995 — the little city in the middle of No Man’s Land has finally arrived on the world stage.

I would add in regard to the horror of the Murrah Building bombing on the second anniversary of the Waco tragedy, with the loss of 86 lives, nobody bought Timothy McVeigh’s justification for terrorism as a response to federal intervention in Waco.

Finally, I guess it’s is too much to ask of Treat et.al, but if we want to thrive in the 21stcentury, don’t we need a bipartisan rejection of Trump’s beginning his presidential campaign on the 30th anniversary of Waco with dog whistle calls for violence? Why can’t Republicans distance themselves from Trump’s supporters like the Proud Boys who cite Waco as justification for more violence? And why do they support a candidate who has “vowed retribution;” proclaimed, “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!;” and warned of “potential death & destruction” if he is prosecuted?

So, when Republican leaders like Treat are reluctant to speak out against ideology-driven policies that they know will fail, the damage from that timidity – though significant – is not the biggest problem. It’s their silence in the face of attacks on our democratic systems that should be the #1 concern.

Categories Accountability, Economy, Education Reform, Extremism, Funding, Ignorance, Oklahoma, Trump

Chicago: Charter Lobby Spent $617,000 Against Vallas’ Opponent in Mayor Race

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
4

The Illinois charter lobby has spent heavily in the Chicago mayoral race. In recent weeks, the charter lobby has run a barrage of ads attacking Brandon Johnson, the City Commissioner who is running against Vallas.

WTTW News reported:

A statewide advocacy organization designed to promote charter schools spent $617,000 to oppose Brandon Johnson’s campaign for mayor of Chicago, records filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections show.

The independent expenditure by the INCS Action Independent Committee, funded by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, paid for $258,000 in cable television advertisements on March 16 and $359,000 in digital advertising on March 15, records show. Election Day is April 4, and early voting is underway.

Before the first round of voting took place, the INCS Action Independent Committee spent an additional $63,000 to oppose Johnson’s campaign. In addition to their spending on the mayoral race, the committee has spent at least $107,000 to support City Council candidates in runoff elections, according to records.

Vallas has a well-established record as a passionate advocate of privatization. He supports both charter schools and vouchers.

Vallas wiped out public schools in New Orleans. He launched a massive privatization program in Philadelphia, and he left the district with a deficit.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Vallas, Paul

Who Is Putting Up the Big Money Behind Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2023 //
14

Inside Philanthropy reported on the major funding behind the push for vouchers.

Vouchers are not popular.

There have been nearly two dozen state referenda about vouchers. Vouchers have always lost, usually by large margins.

State legislatures have ignored the voice of the people and passed voucher legislation despite the public vote against them. Vouchers were rejected in Utah in 2007. Vouchers were rejected in Florida in 2012. Vouchers were rejected in Arizona in 2018. Yet the legislators in these states passed sweeping voucher laws, benefitting home schoolers and students already attending private schools.

Why?

There is a lot of money behind the voucher “movement.” The only thing moving in this “movement” is millions of dollars from rightwing billionaires into the pockets of Republican politicians.

All the usual rightwing suspects are pumping big money into the push for vouchers. Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Bradley Foundation.

Connie Matthiessen of Inside Philanthropy writes:

Who is funding the push for school vouchers?

Dark money and disclosure rules make it difficult to pinpoint the funders that support vouchers or how much they are spending on these efforts. But what we do know is that a lot of the typical channels of conservative-leaning philanthropy are funding the organizations that support vouchers.

One reason it’s so hard to track is that a lot of that money is going through donor-advised funds, which don’t have to identify which individual DAF holders are making specific grants. The conservative DAF DonorsTrust, for example, and its affiliated Donors Capital Fund have been moving money to groups that support vouchers. As my colleague Philip Rojc reported in 2021, “Since its founding, DonorsTrust has given out over $1.5 billion. In addition to the sheer volume of money, a large proportion of DonorsTrust’s grantees operate in the policy arena, magnifying the impact of this funding on the public sphere.” It also raked in over $1 billion that year, according to Politico.

DonorsTrust grantees include voucher advocates like the Heritage Foundation, the American Federation for Children, which was created by Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy Devos, as well as the conservative Independent Women’s Forum. The Cardinal Institute, which is supporting education savings accounts in West Virginia, is also a grantee.

We do know some of the non-DAF funders that are supporting the voucher movement, and a few names come up repeatedly. One of these philanthropies is the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a long-running conservative funder that has had a major influence in Wisconsin politics and also helped bankroll efforts to discredit the 2020 election results, as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker….

The Bradley Foundation funds the Wisconsin Center for Law and Liberty, which supports education vouchers through its Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised fund. The Bradley Impact Fund includes among its grantees the Badger Institute, a conservative Wisconsin think tank that is advocating for the expansion of the privatization of the state’s public education system, as the Wisconsin Examiner reported. According to its 2021 grants list, the foundation has also supported Ohio-based Buckeye Institute and the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, which are both pushing voucher-type movements in their respective states.

DeVos herself is another major voucher backer, and has supported efforts in her home state of Michigan and beyond. She is involved with a number of organizations, including the American Federation for Children, which she chaired and helped found. That organization and its affiliates — the American Federation for Children Action Fund (a 527 group that supports candidates) and the 501(c)(3) American Federation for Children Growth Fund — have promoted education vouchers for years, including in Washington, D.C., as the Washington Post reported in 2017. More recently, it backed efforts to push ESA legislation in Idaho, according to a report in the Idaho Capital Sun (Republican state legislators just rejected a voucher bill there). The organization has also been active in privatization efforts in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly; and in Nebraska, the Nebraska Examiner reports that DeVos and her husband provided most of the dollars identified as funding from the American Federation for Children.

DeVos has worked hard to influence education policy in her home state of Michigan, with some success, but so far, has failed to establish a voucher program there. Most recently, in November, voters overwhelmingly opposed a school voucher plan she helped fund, as Chalkbeat reported. Devos and her family gave $6.3 million in support of the ballot proposal.

The State Policy Network also played a role in the pro-voucher campaign in Idaho, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun report. That organization, which oversees a coalition of state-based conservative think tanks, is backed by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Charles Koch, according to a report by Documented, and has also received funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to Jane Mayer’s reporting. In an opinion piece for Washington Examiner, Chantal Lovell, the State Policy Network’s director of policy advancement, credited her group for expansion of education savings accounts across the country.

A number of organizations that Charles Koch has funded over the years have played a role in the voucher movement. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a membership organization of right-leaning state legislators, promotes education vouchers, for example. ALEC has received support from Charles Koch, Donors Trust and the Bradley Foundation. ALEC-affiliated state legislators have spearheaded the voucher movement in Texas, according to the Texas Monthly. The libertarian Cato Institute, which Charles Koch helped create, according to Mayer, supports a form of school voucher called Scholarship Tax Credits.

Open the link and read the article to learn who else is funding the voucher putsch. You may surprised, as I was, to learn that the Gates Foundation gave $1 million to the Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization that supports vouchers and opposes public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Politics, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Chicago: Hedge Fund Giants $$$$$$$$$upport Vallas

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
2

We know that Mayoral candidate Paul Vallas is getting money from Betsy DeVos. Vallas is also getting even larger contributions from hedge fund financiers because Vallas has promised not to raise taxes on them. His opponent Brandon Johnson wants to tax the highest earners to pay for improved education, mental health, and social services.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook reports in The Lever:

In the final stretch of Chicago’s closely watched mayoral race, candidate Paul Vallas is attacking his progressive opponent’s plan to fund public schools and infrastructure by taxing the wealthy — including a tax on financial trading that would hit some of Vallas’ top campaign donors.

The revenue plan proposed by Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson includes what he calls a “Big Banks Securities and Speculation Tax,” which would levy a $1 or $2 charge on most trades. Johnson’s campaign estimates this financial transaction tax could raise as much as $100 million annually for the city.

Vallas opposed Johnson’s tax plan during a debate last week, arguing that raising taxes “is the absolute wrong approach to take,” and that Chicago’s next mayor should instead focus on reducing spending.

Johnson’s tax proposal would hit financial firms that profit from speculative trades, often conducted at the millisecond level. Executives at six such firms have contributed $1.6 million to Vallas’ bid, according to a Lever review of campaign finance records. That’s nearly 10 percent of Vallas’ total mayoral fundraising haul.

Among the firms that profit from speculative trading is the hedge fund giant Citadel, whose financial dealings were swept up in the 2021 Gamestop controversy. Citadel’s billionaire founder and CEO Ken Griffin, Jr. has been a major funder of right-wing politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Earlier this month, Griffin endorsed Vallas, telling Bloomberg News, “I really admire my colleagues who have supported Paul Vallas publicly with their voice and with their money.”

Johnson’s financial transaction tax plan mirrors those proposed by progressives at the state and federal levels. Griffin is on record opposing the idea, claiming during a 2021 congressional hearing that a national financial transaction tax would “injure Americans hoping to save for retirement.”

Ten Citadel executives have contributed a total of $762,000 to Vallas, a former Chicago Public Schools chief who helped Wall Street firms extract more than $1 billion in additional interest payments from the school district during his tenure, as The Lever reported last week.

Johnson is a former social studies teacherendorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, which has denounced Griffin’s past interventions in local politics and support for mass school closings.

Vallas has additionally received donations from executives at Calamos Investments, the Chicago Trading Company, Cognitive Capital, Consolidated Trading, and DRW — firms that also profit from speculative trades.

Some of the largest U.S. financial exchanges are based in Chicago, including the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Critics of the proposed financial transaction tax say that it could drive some financial firms out of Chicago. Given the robustconnections between financialization and inequality, and the relatively small number of good jobs created by the financial sector, it’s unclear whether the departure of the industry would be a net negative for the city.

On the other hand, the passage of a financial transaction tax in Chicago or in Illinois could buttress efforts to pass such policies in New York — which had a stock transfer tax for most of the 20th century — and New Jersey.

“Enough of Illinois”

The bestselling 2014 book Flash Boys, authored by Michael Lewis, chronicles the world of high-frequency traders, who make enormous sums of money by running trades at the millisecond level, exploiting minor differences in prices to collect huge profits.

Citadel and its affiliated market making firm, Citadel Securities, have long been players in this arena. A 2013 CNN report showed Citadel employees executing 21 million trades in less than three minutes.

In January, Citadel was fined $10 million by South Korean regulators for violating the country’s securities laws while using its proprietary high-frequency trading algorithm.

Griffin moved Citadel from Chicago to Miami in 2021, telling Bloomberg this month that he’d “had enough of Illinois.” But the firm still maintains a significant presence in the city, and as an active high-frequency trader, the financial transaction tax championed by Johnson could cost Citadel enormously.

On January 23, when Johnson announced his financial transaction tax proposal, polls had begun to show a likely runoff between Johnson and Vallas in a then-crowded field of candidates. In Chicago’s municipal elections, if no candidate garners a majority in the first round of voting, the top two advance to a runoff.

That same day, Citadel executive Gerald Beeson contributed $100,000 to Vallas’ campaign, records show. Two days later, another Citadel executive gave $75,000. After Johnson and Vallas proceeded to a runoff, the cash pump was unleashed, with executives at companies connected to aggressive trading donating another $1 million to Vallas.

“Brandon Johnson wants to improve services like mental health and youth jobs programs by taxing speculative financial trading,” said Saqib Bhatti, co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, which backs the transaction tax. “It doesn’t surprise me that executives at firms that specialize in this risky trading would pour money into his opponent’s campaign.”

A Citadel spokesperson told The Lever, “We moved our HQ from Chicago to Miami last year, and with it the bulk of our investment professionals and trading activity takes place outside of Illinois.”

Citadel did not answer questions about the number of employees the firm maintains in Chicago, nor the estimated impact of Johnson’s proposed financial transaction tax on its business. In city election records, all but one of the donations to Vallas from Citadel executives list addresses in Illinois.

The Vallas campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Protecting Retirees

Griffin, Citadel’s CEO, opposed the idea of a financial transaction tax in a 2021 congressional hearing on the video game retailer Gamestop and other “meme stocks.” Citadel was accused by retail investors of ordering stock trading firm Robinhood to stop executing trades in Gamestop as the stock was rising, threatening Citadel’s short positions.

In the hearing, held over Zoom, progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) asked Griffin whether his firm’s trading algorithm is programmed to trade ahead of transactions by pension and retirement funds — and whether that increases costs for such funds.

Griffin replied that his firm has “generated exceptional returns for pension plans and for endowments.”

Tlaib noted that as a result of high frequency trading, ordinary investors end up effectively paying a $5 billion tax each year.

“This means that Wall Street firms like yours engaging in high frequency trades are actually making money at the expense of my residents’ retirement funds,” she said, before asking whether Citadel opposed a federal financial transaction tax.

“We firmly believe that a transaction tax will injure Americans hoping to save for retirement,” said Griffin.

Citadel has also been a member of the Coalition to Prevent the Taxing of Retirement Savings, a collection of stock exchanges and trading platforms that banded together in 2020 to defeat a proposed financial transaction tax in New Jersey.

The coalition opposed the idea nationally in 2021 when it was being floated by the Biden administration, telling CNN, “This approach has a long history of unintended consequences that will penalize workers, pensioners, and American families.”

Griffin has a history of spending big to oppose increases on his taxes: In 2020, he spent nearly $54 million to help defeat a constitutional amendment that would have allowed the state of Illinois to establish a progressive income tax, akin to income taxes on the federal level. Last year, ProPublicaestimated that Griffin’s gamble could save him $51 million in taxes annually.

In the 2022 election cycle, Griffin spent nearly $75 million backing federal Republican candidates and committees, according to a Lever review of campaign finance data.

In the same March interview where Griffin praised Vallas, Griffin also endorsed a 2024 presidential run by DeSantis, saying, “I would love to see him run.” Griffin has donated nearly $11 million to DeSantis’ political committee, according to Florida records.

Current polls show a tight race between Vallas and Johnson. Chicago’s runoff election will take place April 4.

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Categories Accountability, Chicago, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Funding, Vallas, Paul

Florida Rejects Medicaid Expansion, 1 Million Will Lose Health Coverage

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2023 //
3

Under its current reactionary Republican leadership, Florida will bow out of Medicaid. At the same time, North Carolina just agreed to opt in to Medicaid, adding coverage for 600,000 people.

The Miami Herald reports:

Florida is unlikely to expand Medicaid this year, as North Carolina and other Republican states have done recently, but lawmakers are pushing measures they say will expand healthcare for more children from low-income families.

About $76 million has been set aside in the House’s proposed budget to incentivize more pediatricians to treat children on Medicaid. And a bill progressing through the Legislature will expand the number of families eligible for subsidized child health insurance programs.

But the measures fall short of what healthcare advocates warn is needed as Florida next month begins to purge its Medicaid rolls, which swelled by 1.8 million people during the pandemic when additional federal money was given to states to keep people insured. At least 900,000 Floridians, including many children, covered by the program could lose medical coverage, according to state data.

Advocates would rather see Florida emulate North Carolina where Gov. Roy Cooper on Monday signed legislation expanding Medicaid coverage to an estimated 600,000 residents. The bill was passed by the Republican-controlled state Legislature, reversing years of opposition to expanding the federal program.

“Those North Carolina legislators really did the brave and correct and right thing,” said Holly Bullard, chief strategy and development officer at the nonpartisan nonprofit Florida Policy Institute. “There’s no reason why Florida can’t, too.”

Florida’s answer: Bring down costs

Florida lawmakers say they don’t want to increase dependence on benefit programs.

“The better way to go is to try to bring down the cost of care, private insurance and other insurance to increase access while still maintaining quality,” House Speaker Paul Renner said during a news conference on Friday when asked about Medicaid expansion.

Categories Education Reform, Failure, Florida, Funding, Health

Breaking News! Betsy DeVos’ Super PAC Is Funding Paul Vallas

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2023 //
12

MEDIA RELEASE


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday March 29, 2023


Contact: Cassie Creswell, Illinois Families for Public Schools,773-916-7794


BETSY DEVOS’ SUPER PAC SPENDING THOUSANDS TO ELECT PAUL VALLAS MAYOR OF CHICAGO


VALLAS’ EDUCATION PLATFORM PULLED FROM DEVOS’ PRIVATIZATION PLAYBOOK

CHICAGO – Last week ex-President Trump’s former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos made a $59,000 independent expenditure in support of mayoral candidate Paul Vallas’ campaign from a Super PAC she funds, the Illinois Federation for Children PAC.

The Illinois Federation for Children PAC was established in March 2022 and has received $465,000 in total from DeVos’ American Federation for Children Action Fund, a national 527 PAC. The Illinois Federation PAC’s chair, Nathan Hoffman, was a registered contract lobbyist in Springfield for the American Federation for Children until January this year.

Although DeVos has not endorsed Vallas, Vallas’ education plans for Chicago’s school system are directly aligned with DeVos agenda of school privatization, one she supported as Secretary of Education and promotes through her national network of advocacy organizations and PACs: defunding and dismantling public school systems and redirecting public funds via programs like vouchers for private schools.

In a little-noticed February 2022 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, Vallas laid out a radical plan for privatizing Chicago Public Schools (CPS). In addition to supporting Illinois’ existing Invest in Kids tax credit scholarship voucher program, which already diverts millions to pay for vouchers for more than 4000 Chicago children, Vallas would create a city-funded voucher program and pay for it with funds from the CPS operating budget earmarked for teacher pensions. The pension payments would then instead be covered by surplus Tax Increment Financing dollars.

In that same op-ed, Vallas also proposes allowing religious private schools to become district-funded charter (or “contract”) schools, a policy so extreme that it was recently rejected by the conservative Republican attorney general of Oklahoma as “state-funded religion.”

Vallas also voices his support for “a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing.” More recently, Vallas told WBEZ that “money should follow the students” and “we should be running districts of schools, not school districts.” The education platform on Vallas’ website calls for “dismantling the central administration” of CPS. These are exactly the policies that DeVos and American Federation for Children are advocating: funding students not systems and that dollars must follow students.
In June 2022, Vallas appeared on a panel with keynote speaker Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at American Federation for Children. The panel, organized by extremist anti-LGBTQ+ parent group, Awake Illinois. Vallas later denounced Awake Illinois, but did not dissociate himself from DeAngelis or American Federation for Children.

Secretary DeVos’ education agenda was harmful to public schools on a national scale. Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas’ candidacy and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas’ education policies.


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Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Vallas, Paul, Vouchers
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