Follow the Money / the Players

Darwin BondGraham: How a Handful of Pro-Charter Billionaires Flooded Oakland's School Board Elections with Cash

East Bay Express, October 25, 2016
"Two independent-expenditure committees with ties to charter-school groups have spent nearly half-a-million dollars on three Oakland school-board candidates: James Harris, Huber Trenado, and Jumoke Hinton Hodge. Article questions the "grassroots support" claims of GO Public Schools, reporting that, instead, "approximately two-thirds of all the money contributed to the Families and Educators for Public Education committee that GO sponsors came from just three [billionaires]." Just ten people have provided 88% of its cash since 2014.

Ken Epstein: Large Contributions Flood Oakland School Board Races

The Post News Group, October 7, 2016

http://postnewsgroup.com/blog/2016/10/07/large-contributions-flood-oakland-school-board-races/

San Francisco Chronicle:  October 23, 2016
"A flood of money from powerful interest groups is pouring into the tight state Senate race between San Francisco Supervisors Scott Wiener and Jane Kim in what has become this year’s showdown between the city’s moderate and progressive camps." Doris Fisher gave $3.3 million to the California Charter School Association/"Parent Teacher's Alliance" (a pro-charter group fraudulently trading off the PTA name), which then gave $378,000 directly to Scott Wiener, and an additional $421,000 to "Equality California" (a gay rights PAC), which then also passed the money along to Wiener, who is a big charter-school proponent.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Powerful-interest-groups-funding-Wiener-Kim-state-10130727.php?t=7bd0bbfd9b&cmpid=email-premium

Ken Epstein:  Large Contributions Flood Oakland School Board Races

Much of the money flowing into the Oakland Board of Education race this year is coming from Great Oakland (GO) public schools, widely viewed as a supporter of new charter schools and pro-charter policies in Oakland. Article details amounts and PACs seeking to influence the race.

http://postnewsgroup.com/blog/2016/10/07/large-contributions-flood-oakland-school-board-races/

Jan Malvin and Joel Moskowitz:  Op-Ed: 'Oakland Achieves' School Progress Report Misses the Mark

The Post News Group, October 6, 2016

"Confusing the public may well be the major achievement of the fourth annual 'Oakland Achieves' Public Education Progress Report prepared by Urban Strategies Council.  

This report, deemed 'primarily an update on the academic outcomes for the 2014-15 school year,' offers no trends data for Oakland Unified School District-run schools. Rather, it is the first report in the series to feature student-level data from charter schools. Without explaining the omission of trends data for district-run schools, the report appears crafted to tell a story that compares charter schools with district-run schools." Article details the skewed findings of a report that ignores the "selective enrollment and pushout practices" of local charters and other relevant data.

http://postnewsgroup.com/blog/2016/10/06/op-ed-oakland-achieves-school-progress-report-misses-mark/ 

PTA Clarification:  Parent Teacher Alliance is not PTA
California State PTA, May 16, 2017
In statewide elections last year, and now again in the Los Angeles school board election, a charter-school PAC supported by the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) sent out candidate endorsements that traded on the history and standing of the Parent Teacher Association by mimicking its name and logo, prompting the state PTA to issue a statement:
"National PTA has notified the California Charter Schools Association of the Parent Teacher Alliance’s use of National PTA’s PTA trademark and the confusingly similar Parent Teacher Alliance name and has demanded that the Parent Teacher Alliance cease all use of the PTA mark and the Parent Teacher Alliance name.”

Louis Freedberg: Push to Expand California Charter School Enrollments Provokes Backlash

EdSource, October 30, 2016

Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2016

"At a time when Democrats and their party are, by virtually every index, moving left, a powerful center-right pressure group within the liberal universe has nonetheless sprung up. Funded by billionaires and arrayed against unions, it is increasingly contesting for power in city halls and statehouses where Democrats already govern. That's not how the charter school lobby is customarily described, but it's most certainly what it's become."
Article details how, in California and New York, "political action committees funded by charter school backers have become among the largest donors to centrist Democratic state legislators who not only favor expanding charters at the expense of school districts, but also have blocked some of Gov. Jerry Brown's more liberal initiatives."

First of four articles discussing the "never-ending stream of charter scandals coming from California," including the use of school funds to pay a more than half a million-dollar settlement to a teacher who sued for being wrongly terminated after she was ordered by her charter school director to travel to Nigeria and marry the director’s brother-in-law so he could become a U.S. citizen. The California charter landscape and all of its players are surveyed in detail, along with the lack of oversight.

Hedge Papers 129:  Hidden Donations Brought to Light:  How the Wealthy Elite Tried to Defeat Proposition 
Hedge Clippers, June 27, 2016
"In 2012, California voters widely supported Governor Brown’s Proposition 30, a ballot measure designed to raise revenue for public schools. It was premised on the common sense idea that the state’s millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes to fund public schools. Many of the wealthiest Californians, especially hedge fund managers and private equity investors, did not like that they were being pressured to pay higher taxes. They hid their involvement in the “no” campaign by contributing to Americans for Job Security, a Virginia-based 501(c)4 organization. Their contributions were then funneled through two separate Arizona-based groups in an attempt to shield the wealthy donors’ identities. Presumably they knew that a public campaign against Proposition 30 would draw too much scrutiny and put them on the defensive."
http://hedgeclippers.org/hedgepapers-no-29-hidden-donations-brought-to-light/#.V3PpTCKroCQ.twitter

Aaron Mendelson:  Charter School Groups Spending Big in California Legislative Races
KPCC, May 25, 2016
Spending by two pro-charter groups, the "Parent Teacher Alliance" (not affiliated with the PTA) and the California Charter Schools Association, has already outpaced the $1.65 million "dark money" spent by the CCSA independent expenditure committee in 2013 and 2014 races for California state senate and assembly seats.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2016/05/25/60908/charter-groups-spending-big-in-california-legislat/

 

NATIONAL:

This page presents a petition asking Betsy DeVos to answer four questions:
1. Do you agree that all schools receiving public dollars must be held to the same accountability and transparency standards?
2. Will you agree not to privatize funding for Special Education of Title I?
3. Will you stand with educators and protect our most vulnerable students from discrimination, including LGBT students, immigrant students, students of color, girls and English language learners?
4. Will you focus, as educators are focused, on the civil rights of all children, regardless of their ZIP code, by challenging the inequities so many face in equal access to programs, services and support?

After a meeting at the White House with the leaders of historically black colleges and universities, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, in an apparent attempt to bring up her pet issue of school choice, praised the segregated higher education system of the Jim Crow South, sparking controversy.

A "five-page document produced by the Council for National Policy calls for a “restoration of education in America” that would minimize the federal role, promote religious schools and home schooling and enshrine “historic Judeo-Christian principles” as a basis for instruction.
Names of the council’s members are closely held. But the Southern Poverty Law Center published a 2014 membership directory showing that Stephen K. Bannon — now chief White House strategist for President Trump — was a member and that Kellyanne Conway — now counselor to the president — served on the council’s executive committee"
The Washington Teachers' Union, BlackLivesMatter DC, and the Black Youth Project protested at a middle school that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was scheduled to visit, holding signs and standing in front of her as she tried to enter. She left and returned later. "Her critics say that her long advocacy for vouchers and her push for lax regulation of charter schools reveals an antipathy to public education; they point to an August 2015 speech in which she said that the traditional public education system is a “dead end” and that “government truly sucks. Thousands of people have signed petitions, started Twitter campaigns and called congressional offices urging that DeVos not be confirmed." "I almost fell for Teach For America. Its brochure told me I could “make a difference” after college by postponing my imaginary yet promising career for two short years in order to teach in a low-income area. As a senior in high school, I did not yet know that “making a difference” meant shortchanging students in need of real teachers, deprofessionalizing the teaching profession, and leading the charge to privatize schools." Article asserts that Teach For America "bankrolls the expansion of charter schools," and promotes "epistemological racism," "savior complexes," and "neoliberal ideology," while driving down teacher pay and professionalism. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who has stated that public schools are "hobbled" by elected boards, has donated more than $3.7 million to the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA)’s political action committee so far this election season. The article details Hastings' history as an education reformer, his backing of the heavily criticized Rocketship and failed California Charter Academy chains, and his contribution to the "lengthy dismantling" of bilingual education in California. “When tech industry leaders like Reed Hastings call for an elimination of school boards or for more privatization of public schools, they block low-income people from using the one instrument that the powerful can’t ignore – their vote.”

 

The policy agenda of The Movement for Black Lives released in July argues that charters represent a shift of public funds and control to private entities. Along with "an end to the privatization of education," organizers are demanding increased investments in traditional community schools and the health and social services they provide. The statement comes just weeks after the NAACP also called for a freeze on charters. The article lists the most significant concerns charter school critics have cited over the years.

 

"I almost fell for Teach For America. Its brochure told me I could “make a difference” after college by postponing my imaginary yet promising career for two short years in order to teach in a low-income area. As a senior in high school, I did not yet know that “making a difference” meant shortchanging students in need of real teachers, deprofessionalizing the teaching profession, and leading the charge to privatize schools." Article asserts that Teach For America "bankrolls the expansion of charter schools," and promotes "epistemological racism," "savior complexes," and "neoliberal ideology," while driving down teacher pay and professionalism. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who has stated that public schools are "hobbled" by elected boards, has donated more than $3.7 million to the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA)’s political action committee so far this election season. The article details Hastings' history as an education reformer, his backing of the heavily criticized Rocketship and failed California Charter Academy chains, and his contribution to the "lengthy dismantling" of bilingual education in California. “When tech industry leaders like Reed Hastings call for an elimination of school boards or for more privatization of public schools, they block low-income people from using the one instrument that the powerful can’t ignore – their vote.”
The policy agenda of The Movement for Black Lives released in July argues that charters represent a shift of public funds and control to private entities. Along with "an end to the privatization of education," organizers are demanding increased investments in traditional community schools and the health and social services they provide. The statement comes just weeks after the NAACP also called for a freeze on charters. The article lists the most significant concerns charter school critics have cited over the years.

 

The man that Turkey’s leaders have blamed for a failed coup attempt by a group of army officers is an Islamic scholar named Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and is behind one of the biggest charter school chains in the U.S., with over 160 schools. The charters have sparked controversy over the years, with accusations that their Turkish leaders favor Turkish-run businesses when awarding contracts; that they hire large numbers of Turkish teachers on H1-B visas; and that some promote Turkish culture through curriculum.

 

 

Capital&Main Staff:  Failing the Test:  Charter School Powerbrokers
Capital&Main, June 2, 2016
Part of a series discussing how lack of oversight, transparency, and other issues have made charter schools detrimental to public education while offering no tangible academic advantages. Article provides link to other articles in the series.

“Charter proponents, most notably the Walton Family Foundation, contribute large amounts of money to expand charter schools in select cities around the nation. The foundation says it has invested more than $385 million in new charter schools over the past two decades and, earlier this year, announced that it plans to give $1 billion over five years to support charters and school-choice initiatives.”
…
“If funders like Eli Broad or the Walton Family Foundation were truly committed to education equality,” says John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, “they could have taken steps to simply support reducing class size or after-school [activities] or summer programs that would provide more educational opportunity, rather than try to invest in strategies to undermine the capacities of a school district. The primary aim is to dismantle the school district as a whole and replace it with a new way of doing public education.”

http://capitalandmain.com/latest-news/issues/education/failing-the-test-charter-school-powerbrokers-0602/