Read about his funders here.
In the current campaign, he has the support of 18 billionaires, including Bill Gates.
Archives for category: Networkfor Public Education Action Fund
The Network for Public Education Action is grading the presidential candidates.
If you want to keep track, read here.
“For an explanation of why the candidates received the grades they did, click on their names to the left.”
Ratings may change as candidates express their views.
If you attend a town hall and learn more about a candidate’s views, let us know.
Contact Darcie Cimarusti, Research Associate, NPE Action at darciecimarusti@gmail.com
Rachel M.Cohen wrote in the American Prospect that the Democratic candidates are distancing themselves from the charter school issue, which only a few years ago was deeply embedded in the Obama administration education policy.
This is progress. In 2016, it was nearly impossible to get any candidate to discuss K-12 education. At last they notice that it is not cool for a Democrat to support charters. Most are trying to play the issue cautiously, being against “for profit” charters, but not acknowledging that large numbers of nonprofits are managed by for profits.
This far, Bernie Sanders is the candidate who has taken the strongest stand against charters, endorsing the NAACP call for a moratorium.
Other candidates are hedging their bets.
Hours after Sanders’s education plan was released, Elizabeth Warren told reporters that she agreed for-profit charters are “a real problem.” She has not yet released her own K-12 plan. While the Massachusetts senator has supported charter schools in the past, in 2016 she came out against a high-profile ballot initiative that would have allowed charters to expand much more quickly in her state. The measure ended up failing, with 62 percent of voters siding against it.
South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also came out to say he supports Sanders’s proposal to ban for-profit charter schools, though he affirmed a month earlier that charters “have a place” in the education landscape “as “a laboratory for techniques that can be replicated.”
Beto O’Rourke, who opposes a national moratorium on new charters, told the NEA presidential forum that “There is a place for public nonprofit charter schools, but private charter schools and voucher programs—not a single dime in my administration will go to them.” O’Rourke has supported charters in the past, and his wife is a former charter school leader who now sits on the board of a local education reform group that supports expanding charters in El Paso.
A friend in California forwarded an email showing that charter zealot and billionaire Reed Hastings is hosting a gathering for Mayor Pete, which suggests that he would be a strong charter guy. His background at McKinsey points in the same direction.
The Network for Public Education Action will be following and grading the candidates on the issues that concern us. Feel free to let us know what you learn at town halls.
If you meet one of them, ask them if they will pledge to eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, which currently funnels $440 Million each year to charters, mostly the big corporate chains like KIPP, which do not need a federal subsidy.
This is my favorite cause. Please join and support if you want to be part of the Resistance.
The Network for Public Education began in 2013, founded by Anthony Cody and me. Since its humble beginnings, the Network has grown to 330,000 followers on its mailing lists. NPE led the protest against the appointment of Betsy DeVos, generating over 100,000 emails to the Senate in a matter of days.
Since then, The Network for Public Education (a 501(c)(3)) and the Network for Public Education Action (a 501 (c)(4)) have grown in both support and stature. NPE has issued respected national reports on topics such teacher evaluation and online learning, as well as a 50 state report card on school privatization with the Schott Foundation for Education. The NPE School Privatization Explained toolkit has been downloaded by thousands and its Another Day Another Charter Scandal page has become a valuable resource for advocates and reporters. NPE has a growing Grassroots Network that puts out monthly newsletters and connects activists across the country. Over 100 organizations belong to the Network.
NPE’s most impactful report to date has been its latest report, Asleep at the Wheel, which documents decades of wasteful spending by the U.S Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program. CSP is, in fact, a charter school slush fund of $440 million annually, which Betsy DeVos has used to expand corporate chains like KIPP, IDEA, and Success Academy. That report has been cited by members of Congress and in news stories across the country; it resulted in the House reducing the funding for the CSP program and a letter to Secretary DeVos from 14 House members demanding answers to questions raised by the report.
Meanwhile, the Network for Public Education Action has grown in influence by issuing Action Alerts to promote pro-public education legislation–hundreds of alerts have been generated producing hundreds of thousands of emails to policy makers, with a typical response of 3,000 or more emails for national campaigns. Action’s blockbuster report on how billionaires have influenced elections to promote a corporate reform agenda has been referenced in news stories. Action also informs voters by endorsing candidates who support public education and national, state and local levels.
Our latest project—the Presidential Candidates Project—rates candidates on their position on charter schools, vouchers, testing and their association with corporate education reform. That project has been cited in news stories as well. We want every candidate for President to explain whether they will eliminate the federal Charter Schools Program, whether they will eliminate the federal mandate for annual testing, and whether they will unequivocally support public schools and oppose privatization.
The organizations hold well attended conferences –five to date. In 2020, NPE Action and NPE will hold a joint conference in Philadelphia on March 28 and 29.
Please join and please come to the Philly conference.
Both organizations depend on donations to do advocacy work. You can give to the Network for Public Education here and NPE Action here. NPE Action especially relies on individual donations because it is not eligible for most grants. It costs money to make sure we can endorse in individual races, to buy board insurance and to file legal documents with the IRS. We pay our one full time and two part time employees modest salaries–employees both organizations share. And from time to time we have to consult with attorneys in order to make sure we operating within the rules of the IRS. And NPE Action gives scholarships to our conference.
Please make a donation today for my birthday to NPE Action. Just click here.
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Join the Battle to Save Our Public Schools!
The Tide is Turning But We Need Your Help
The narrative is shifting.
As candidates jockey for position, public education issues are no longer relegated to soundbites. Major media outlets are reaching out to NPE Action to better understand why candidates are backing away from charters schools. Our NPE Action articles about the role of education policy in the 2020 election have run in The New York Daily News and The Progressive.
We need your support to continue to change the conversation and move our issues forward.
A donation of $20 helps us update the 2020 Presidential Candidates Project. Reporters have used the report as a resource to track the candidates’ positions on our issues.
A donation of $50 helps NPE Action continue to endorse candidates who will fight for our issues at the federal, state and local levels.
A donation of $100 helps us produce reports like Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Our Public Schools. That report exposed how money floods into elections to subvert the democratic process and spread corporate education reform.
A donation of $250 or more will help us bring advocates from coast to coast together in Philadelphia for our 6th National Conference. We hope you’ll join us for that conference and that you’ll consider submitting a panel to share the work you are doing in yourcommunity to keep your public schools alive.
And a recurring monthly donation of any amount becomes the income we can depend on to issue Action Alerts when we need to let our legislators know where we stand.
In her new book, Slaying Goliath, Diane has called us “the Resisters,” the volunteer army “fighting back to successfully keep alive their public schools.”
We simply can’t continue this work without contributions from “resisters” like you. Please give what you can today.
Helen Gym is a firebrand member of Philadelphia’s City Council. She leads the way on progressive issues. She got her start as a parent advocate fighting for public schools.
Now there is speculation she will run for Mayor in 2023.
Helen will be a keynote speaker at the convention of the Network for Public Education on March 28-29, 2020.
Join us in Philadelphia for another great meeting!
Marla Kilfoyle reports on news from the NPE Grassroots Education Network.
More than 125 independent organizations from across the country are working to improve and strengthen public schools.
News item #1:
NPE Action National Conference – Save the Date – March 28-29 in Philadelphia, PA. The window is now open for workshop proposals for the Network for Public Education conference, March 28-29, 2020, in Philadelphia. I hope you all sign on to present on a panel and certainly we want all to attend. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NBCNDKK
Read the rest to learn what your friends and allies are doing.
Please open and read this action alert from NPE Action.
We urge all concerned citizens, parents, and educators to contact your Senators and encourage them to cut the budget of the federal Charter Schools Program (“charter slush fund”) and use the $440 million currently budgeted for Title 1 and the nation’s neediest children.
NPE wrote a report on the federal Charter Schools Program and documented that one-third of the charter schools it funded between 2006-2014 either never opened or closed right after opening. The percentage of failed charters was even higher in states such as California and Louisiana. The CSP is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. The failed federally-funded charters wasted nearly $1 billion over a six-year period studied.
Charter advocates attacked the report but no one has pointed out a single error of fact. They don’t like it because it shows in accurate detail that the federal Charter Schools Program is awash in waste, fraud and abuse.
Some of the most prominent members of the House of Representatives signed a letter criticizing the Department of Education’s failure to exercise oversight of the CSP and calling on Betsy DeVos to provide oversight of the program and to update the CSP database, which has not been updated since 2015.
The CSP currently is funded at $440 million. DeVos asked to raise it to $500 million. The Appropriations committee of the House of Representatives proposed a cut of $40 million, reducing it to $400 million.
Make no mistake. This is Betsy DeVos’s charter slush fund. This year, she gave $89 million to the richly-funded KIPP, and $116 million to IDEA, which plans to open 20 charter schools in El Paso, which will swamp the local public schools. She also gave nearly $10 million to Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain, which is swimming in hedge fund money. The CSP is play money for DeVos. The whole program should be canceled. Charter schools are not needy. They do not need or deserve federal aid. Let the Waltons and Charles Koch and Bill Gates and Eli Broad and Reed Hastings and Michael Bloomberg pay for them.
If you liked the NPE report ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL, released today by the Network for Public Education, please consider joining. It is free. We rely on donations. We believe in the power of numbers, combined with a small but amazing staff. If you sign up, you will get alerts about what is happening in DC and in your own state, where your participation can make a difference. You will be asked to send emails to your representatives when important matters are being decided.
If you want to become more active in the fight for better public schools and against privatization and high-stakes testing, we can direct you to local groups in your state. We have toolkits for civic action.
Our affiliate (Network for Public Education Action) endorses candidates for local and state elections.
We believe that people power can beat money power, when we are informed and organize. We are many, they are few.
Go to this link to learn more about what you can do and how you can get involved.
Our next national conference will be held in the spring of 2020 in Philadelphia. Stay tuned for details.
You can find “Asleep At the Wheel” here.
The Network for Public Education Action fund is happy to endorse Pam Harbin for Pittsburgh school board! She is running in District 4.
Pam has a long history of supporting public school students and public schools. She has been working on the ground for twelve years in the fight to improve and save public education in Pittsburgh as a parent, community organizer and a long-time disability rights advocate. She has served on numerous PPS district-wide advisory committees, and has been an unofficial school board watchdog, streaming and/or attending more than 2,000 hours of school board meetings.
Pam is the Co-Founder of the Education Rights Network (ERN), a parent-led organization working for fully resourced, inclusive and quality education for students in Pennsylvania. She is also the immediate past president and a board director for Evolve Coaching, an organization that supports individuals with disabilities and their communities through education, employment, and the arts.
Pam has a clear sense of what it takes to create a system that works for all kids. She told NPE Action that the district needs “smaller class sizes and a smaller ratio of kids to adults in each building with more teachers, counselors, social workers, paraprofessionals, nurses, librarians, and other staff that keeps the building functioning at its best.”
She is also keenly aware of the dangers posed by the privatization movement, and how it can grow in a city like Pittsburgh.
The primary election is on May 21, 2019. Please be sure to get out and vote for Pam Harbin, a powerhouse public education advocate.
