NPE Action previously endorsed nine Senate candidates:
Mark Kelly-Arizona
Jon Ossoff-Georgia
Theresa Greenfield-Iowa
Barbara Bollier-Kansas
Amy McGrath-Kentucky
Sara Gideon-Maine
Steve Bullock-Montana
Cal Cunningham-North Carolina
Jaime Harrison-South Carolina
We endorse three more candidates for the United States Senate:
Doug Jones-Alabama
Gary Peters-Michigan
M.J. Hegar-Texas
The Network for Public Education Action is delighted to endorse the following candidates for election to the United States Senate:
Mark Kelly-Arizona
Jon Ossoff-Georgia
Theresa Greenfield-Iowa
Barbara Bollier-Kansas
Amy McGrath-Kentucky
Sara Gideon-Maine
Steve Bullock-Montana
Cal Cunningham-North Carolina
Jaime Harrison-South Carolina
We endorse these nine candidates as friends of public education. We are not able to send them money, but we urge friends of public education in their states to donate to their campaigns and vote for them.
The Network for Public Education Action Fund is delighted to endorse Candace Valenzuela, who is running for Congress in District 24 in Texas. She was also endorsed by Emily’s List.
This is Candace’s campaign video, where she thanks her teachers and her school for enabling her to overcome poverty.
The Network for Public Education Action is pleased to endorse Candace Valenzuela for Texas House District 24. Candace is a former school board trustee who knows first hand that our public education system is under attack. She understands that corporate special interests have been undermining public education in favor of alternative models. Candace believes that public education delivers the best results on a consistent basis and true opportunity means giving every child the opportunity to learn and grow regardless of their zip code.
Candace served as a member of the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District Board of Trustees At-large in Texas for two years. She expanded STEM academies and job training in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch schools and her community is already reaping the economic benefits. Candace wants to make those opportunities a reality for all children living in TX-24. She will use her experience to stand up to Betsy DeVos’s devastating agenda that strips vital funding from our schools.
Candace will fight for universal pre-K, because she believes every child deserves a chance to get ahead. Finally, she believes that we need to pay teachers higher salaries so that we can keep more of them in our schools for longer. That also means finding a way to remove their student loan debt.
Candace is an outstanding candidate and friend of public education. We urge voters in Texas House District 24 to cast their vote for Candace in the general election on November 3, 2020.
You can post this endorsement using this link:
Candace Valenzuela for Texas House District 24
No candidate authorized this ad. It is paid for by Network for Public Education Action, New York, New York.
Thanks for all you do,
Governor Cuomo slashed school funding across the state of New York. Other governors have found ways to protect their schools and children. Please sign the petition of the Network for Public Education Action, calling on Governor Cuomo to restore school funding. Schools cannot safely reopen with less money.
Please read the NPE Action endorsement of Joe Biden for President.
We support public schools.
Donald Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, are hostile to the very idea of public schools. They have spent three years proposing deep cuts to public education and attempting to establish federally-funded vouchers for private and religious schools.
In contrast, Joe Biden has proposed dramatic increases in funding to public schools by tripling the amount that Title I schools would receive. He has voiced strong support for more counselors and psychologists in our schools, as well as increased funding for high-quality pre-kindergarten programs. He supports community schools that link social services and the school together to serve children and their families better.
At the Public Education Forum held in Pittsburgh in December of 2019, Joe Biden was asked by NPE Board member Denisha Jones if he would commit to ending standardized testing in schools. His unequivocal response was, “Yes. You are preaching to the choir.” He said to a national audience that “teaching to a test underestimates and discounts the things that are most important for students to know.” He described evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students as a “big mistake.”
At the same public forum in Pittsburgh, he was dismissive of the policies of Secretary of Education DeVos, saying that under his administration, “Betsy DeVos’s whole notion of charter schools…are gone.”
The public statements expressed by Joe Biden encourage us to believe that he does not intend to follow the disastrous education policies of the Obama years included in Race to the Top, which were closely aligned with the failed policies of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind.
We are taking candidate Joe Biden at his word. We believe that he recognizes that Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind were harmful to our schools and our children.
However, if those policies re-emerge, we will vigorously oppose them. We will also continue to be engaged in monitoring the words of both candidates and their parties’ platforms.
We urge our supporters and all friends of public education to go to the polls in November and vote for Joe Biden. The future of our public schools and our democracy is at stake.
In the words of NPE Action President, Diane Ravitch, “We support Joe Biden because he has promised to reverse the failed “test-and-punish” federal policies of the past two decades. For the sake of our children, their teachers, our public schools, and our democracy, Trump must go.”
A letter from Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education.
First and foremost, we care about you. When we realized the 43% of our registrants were in a higher-risk group for Covid-19, we knew we had to reschedule.
Our conference hotel, the Philadelphia Doubletree, has been a wonderful partner, and within a few days, we will share a new 2020 date.
We ask that you be patient as we finalize plans and create a list of what you need to do. But, we wanted to let you know quickly in case you need to cancel a flight.
We are so disappointed that we will not see you in two weeks, but we look forward to seeing you in the not too distant future. An email with more detail will arrive in a few days.
Stay healthy and take care of those you love.
Jan Resseger, tireless champion for social and economic justice, reflects on the fading reputation of the charter industry. The decision by the Trump administration to axe the federal Charter Schools Program (DeVos’s slush fund for corporate charter chains) is the latest affront to an industry that once was regarded as the great hope for innovation and effectiveness but got overwhelmed by scandals and profiteering.
Resseger credits the dramatic turn in the public reputation of the charter industry to the work of the Network for Public Education and its executive director Carol Burris.
Burris brings to her work the experience of a veteran educator, a teacher and principal who spots scams quickly. Burris also has a rock solid sense of integrity that makes her unwilling to tolerate organizations that are designed to benefit the adults, not the students. She is the quintessential embodiment of the “David” I wrote about in my book SLAYING GOLIATH. She works with passion and dedication because of a sense of mission, not for love of money. She is a mortal threat to the Goliaths who wear the fake mantel of education reform. She can’t be bought and she can’t be stopped. Unlike the hirelings of Goliath, she really does work for the children, for whom she has worked all her life.
Apparently, Ed Deformers—themselves richly endowed with millions and millions from billionaires such as the Waltons, the Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, Koch, etc.—have descended to claiming that the Network for Public Education is funded by “Dark Money” and the big, bad teachers’ unions. Evidently they are troubled to have any dissent to their self-serving narrative that only privatization can “save” America’s children from the terrible public schools and teachers who have educated 90% of all Americans.
Mercedes Schneider performs a compare and contrast here, reviewing the tax filings of billionaire-funded “Education Post” with that of NPE. Of course, a fair comparison would have pitted NPE funding vs. not only “Education Post”, but also billionaire-funded The 74, The Center for Education Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, The City Fund, and the dozens of other front groups that have oodles of money but no members. (NPE has nearly 400,000 followers who pay no dues).
On one side is EdPost:
Started in 2014, Education Post is an ed-reform blog and the brainchild of California billionaire, Eli Broad. Right out of the starting gate, EdPost (actual nonprofit name, Results in Education Foundation) had $5.5M to play with in its first year.
EdPost’s first CEO, Peter Cunningham, was paid $1M for 2 1/2 years of blogging. Moreover, in his position as a founding member of EdPost’s board, Stewart was compensated a total of $422,925 for 40 hrs/wk across 30 months as “outreach and external affairs director.” (To dig into that EdPost history, click here and follow the links.)
Deutsch reviews NPE’s revenues and reports a cumulative total from 2016-2018 of: $659,300.
What a haul!
But oh, those salaries!
In 2016,
Diane Ravitch was president and was not compensated.
Carol Burris was executive director and is the only compensated person listed on the tax form; her total 2016 compensation was $41,108 (40 hrs/wk), most of which was spent working for NPE (33 hrs/wk), and the remainder, for NPE Action (7 hrs/wk).
(Point of fact: Burris actually works at least 60 hours per week.)
But wait! In 2018, Burris’s salary for her full-time job was $55,000 a year. What a scandal!
No one is in NPE for the money.
The most amazing fact about NPE is how much it has accomplished with one full-time staff member and minimal resources. See:
A state-by-state report on support for public schools;
Online learning: What Every Parent Should Know;
Billionaires hijacking public schools;
The real story in New Orleans;
School privatization toolkit,
The waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal Charter Schools Program (here and here).
Whoa! That’s a lot of bang for the buck. One full-time employee, two part-time employees (Darcie Cimarusti and Marla Kilfoyle) and all that productivity!
Is ”EdPost,” with all their millions, jealous of NPE?
Or just sore because they have lost the war of ideas, now that their boasts have flopped and Betsy DeVos is the face of their billionaire-funded “movement”?
Time to register for the best education conference ever!
Meet your allies and leaders of the Resistance!
I will see you in Philly March 28-29!
