Charter School

SEE TWO

  see privatization, walmart, billionaires, union, collective bargaining, defund the left, public pension }:

 promoted to primary 6/16, charter 2 8/16

belated 9/13 see vouchers

CAPT 1 24

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School districts where White students are more likely to be in an Advanced Placement class or gifted and talented program, compared with Black students.

http://projects.propublica.org/miseducation

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disaster cap'l:

perfect storm

Representing billionaire Eli Broad, Bruce Reed celebrated the paralysis in local governance in post-Katrina New Orleans as key to pulling off the rapid expansion of charter schools, exploiting disaster without oversight by any “central office”:

“New Orleans is an amazing story — when you make it possible to get political dysfunction and sick a bunch of talent on the problem — it’s the one place where grand bargain of charters has been kept the best.”

New Orleans' "amazing" story resulted in the firing of 7,500 mostly black school employees, wiping out a substantial part of the city’s black middle class. Meanwhile, the “miracle” claims of boosters like Reed have fallen apart. A recent editorial in New Orleans’ African American newspaper called out the false promises and lack of results from the charter experiment.

8/16 update inequality charters

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/katrina-pain-index-2016-numbers-race-and-class-gap-widening

3.Ninety-three percent of New Orleans’ 48,000 public school students are in charter schools, the highest percentage in the U.S. Before Katrina, there wereover 65,000 students enrolled in New Orleans public schools, less than 1 percent in charter schools. There are now 44 governing bodies for public schools in New Orleans. There are seven types of charter schools in Louisiana. The public schools are 87 percent African American. Widespread charter school problems for students with disabilities are getting a little bit better according to a federal court monitor report. The public has very mixed feelings about the system reflected in the most recent poll, which shows 43 percent of whites think the schools are getting better, compared to 31 percent of African Americans; while 23 percent of African Americans thought schools were getting worse, in contrast to 15 percent of whites.   

2,000. Black median income in New Orleans rose from $23,000 in 2005 to $25,000 eight years later, while white median income rose by $11,000 from $49,000 to $60,000 during the same time.

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http://www.alternet.org/education/case-against-kipp-charter-schools

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http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/mike-pence-loves-alec-and-keeps-pushing-public-school-privatization-despite-lousy

... Pence is a hardcore right-winger playing the long game, especially when it comes to privatizing public schools.

It’s not just that the Republican vice-presidential nominee and Indiana governor last weekend told a roomful of deregulation-obsessed executives and lobbyists in Indianapolis, “You are the model for Washington, D.C., after this election. You really are.”

The nation is “at a fork in the road,” Pence said at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual meeting, referring not only to who would be president for the next four years but who would control the Supreme Court for the “next 40 years.”

The choice is “whether we will have justices appointed to the Supreme Court, as my partner in this endeavor is committed to doing, that reflect the brilliance and the greatness and the principles of the late justice Antonin Scalia,” he said. “So I would say to all of you, for the sake of the rule of law, for the sake of the sanctity of life, for the sake of our Second Amendment and all of our God-given liberties, we must ensure that the next president making appointments to the Supreme Court of the United States of America is President Donald Trump.”

Pence was no stranger to the stage of ALEC, a corporate-funded behemoth that drafts bills and finds right-wing lawmakers to carry them. He’s been an ALECfixture for years, touting deregulation, privatization and extreme social conservatism. But he’s best-known for a personal focus on supplantingtraditional public education, notably embracing taxpayer-funded vouchers so parents can send kids to K-12 private schools and aggressively expanding privately run charter public schools.

As is typical at ALEC, Pence praised enterprise and deregulation, and said a Trump administration would result in "empowering states with resources and flexibility.” But a closer look at his Indiana record of privatizing education, where the ALEC model has been in play, has shown it to be a brazen and failed experiment.

Charter School and Voucher Problems

A recent National Public Radio profile of Pence’s education record noted that he has been one of the leading governors pushing K-12 privatization. “Under Gov. Pence, the growth in the number of charter schools and the use of private school vouchers have exploded,” it said. “After the voucher program survived a state Supreme Court challenge in 2013, it's grown into one of the largest in the country. Pence helped to do that by advocating to expand the program to include middle-income, not just low-income families, and also by removing the cap on how many students qualify.”

Yet this May, when WTHR, Indianapolis’ NBC-TV affiliate, looked at the charter school experiment, itfound that “nearly half of the state's 76 charter schools are doing poorly or failing.” The scores were based on the state’s new accountability standards.

In one example, reporters quoted sources from Indiana Science Academy West who said, "Nothing is taught... nothing is learned,” and cited "unlicensed teachers,” high staff turnover and a textbook shortage. But under Indiana law, itnoted, “Those [charters] failing year after year, not only get a second chance but can fail six consecutive years before the state steps in.”

That investigative report was not unique, but it is quite a counterpoint to the rhetoric from Pence and the K-12 privatization movement that traditional schools are failing and that charters and vouchers are the answer.

At ALEC, the education agenda also includes tax credits to send children to private schools, impeding and dismantling labor unions, andcreating new state agencies to overrule locally elected school boards and communities. Soon after Pence gave a keynote at a 2013 ALEC summit, the group published its annual “Report Card on American Education.”

Pence wrote the 2014 report’s introduction, boasting, “We enacted the most ambitious school choice program in the country in 2011. Last year, nearly 20,000 low-income Hoosiers used vouchers, or what we call Choice Scholarships, to attend the school of their choice—a 500 percent increase from the year before. This year the number of applications has grown to nearly 30,000. In addition to the School Choice Scholarships, more than 35,000 Indiana students are attending public charter schools across our state.”

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But Indiana’s record on vouchers has been problematic. A May 2016 Brookings Institution report on vouchers in Indiana and Louisiana slammed the programs. In both states, “research… has found that public school students that received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored lower on reading and math tests compared to similar students that remained in public schools. The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large.”}:

Moreover, traditional public schools were doing a better job than voucher counterparts when it came to educating poorer students. “It is at least plausible that Louisiana and Indiana public schools have surpassed their private schools (for low-income students),” Brookings said.

Nonetheless, this year Pence is spending more money on vouchers than his state legislature appropriated, underscoring his zealotry as a pro-privatization ideologue.

Protecting Investors, Not Students

Meanwhile, under Pence the state has gone out of its way to keep failing charters from closing. Like many states that have granted the industry wide license, under Pence the various players in his state’s charter sector—a mix of private and public institutions—don’t want to close failing schools but instead look for new managers to run the schools and new regulators to sign off.

One Indiana public radio station, WFYI, called this tactic “authorizer shopping.” The highest-profile example was Thea Bowman Leadership Academy in Gary, Indiana, where problems ranged from low student test scores to deep governance issues, such as high staff turnover, not satisfying federal education standards and no terms for charter board members.

As WFYI reported this year, in 2013 seven “chronically failing schools were denied reauthorization from Ball State [University, their founding sponsor], yet three of the schools were granted new charters from a different authorizer to remain open.” That led the legislature to pass a law to require the state Board of Education to approve any such reprieve, a policy thatsounds like state accountability but in practice minimizes input from locally elected school boards. The state Board approved it in June.

But the negative impacts of these privatization experiments go beyond vouchers and charter schools. Diverting millions of taxpayer dollars to private, often religious schools takes resources away from traditional public schools. Pence, additionally, has created new state low-interest loans to benefit charters, and his last state budget included a new $1,500-per-student allocation to charters for non-academic expenses. His GOP majority legislature scaled it back to $500 per student.

According to the Washington Post, the cumulative negative impacts of privatization have created a shortage of qualified public school teachers in Indiana. “What’s going on? Pretty much the same thing as in Arizona, Kansas and other states where teachers are fleeing:a combination of under-resourced schools, the loss of job protections, unfair teacher evaluation methods, an increase in the amount of mandated standardized testing and the loss of professional autonomy,” the Post's education blogger wrote last year.

“According to the Indianapolis Star, the Republican chairmen of the House and Senate education committees have asked General Assembly leaders to approve having the legislative education study committee review what is causing the drop and how the state could respond,” the Post continued. “For one thing, they can look in the mirror.The Republican leadership of the state—including Gov. Mike Pence—showed their respect for teachers by working very hard this year to strip power from Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, a veteran educator who won election to the post in 2012 (by defeating Tony Bennett, the incumbent who was a protege of former Florida governor Jeb Bush). Oh, by the way, she is a Democrat.”

The pattern under Pence continues. Under the state’s new public school funding formula, richer school districts will get more money and poorer districts less,another education blogger noted. WaPo's education blogger summed it up like this: “For 2015-17, the state legislature gave less funding to urban schools and more to charter schools and private schools that accept students with vouchers.”

In other words, while Pence preaches privatization as the cure-all for K-12 education, his state's traditional school system is being undermined and supplanted, and the privateers' gains are the public's losses.

In recent years, Pence has been a featured speaker at libertarian forums to promote this agenda; audiences love the rhetoric but pay little attention to the resulting reality on the ground.:{ Before Pence was named Trump's running mate, he attended a Republican Governors Association luncheon at David Koch's mansionin Florida with "about 60 wealthy backers.” And since joining the ticket, he was a "featured guest" at the Koch brothers network's semiannual libertarian donor retreat in Colorado.

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Which means Pence has become perhaps the nation's top evangelist for ALEC and education privateers across America.

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2016 conf

American Legislative Exchange Council will push bills toprotect failing charter schools, silence political speech, and obstruct environmental protections in the ALEC 2016 agenda introduced at its annual meeting in Indianapolis this week.

ALEC faces renewed public attention as it gears up for the annual meeting, where corporate lobbyists sit side-by-side with state legislators in luxury hotels to vote as equals on "model bills" that then get pushed to become law in states across the country.

As the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, Donald Trump chose an ALEC ally, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, as his running mate, while his party's 2016 platform was clearly stamped in the Koch-fueled ALEC mold.

Pence Pushed ALEC Agenda in the Hoosier State

As Governor, Pence appointed an ALEC staffer to his cabinet, and pushed parts of the ALEC agenda into law, such as anti-worker bills like repealing the prevailing wage and privatizing public schools in various ways. He even sent a letter to state legislators urging them to join ALEC, which is widely described as a corporate bill mill. ALEC is funded by Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, huge global tobacco and drug companies, and other corporations that pay a premium to access ALEC lawmakers.

Conveniently for him, this year's meeting will be held in the snazzy J.W. Marriott in downtown Indianapolis. Pence is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at lunch on Wednesday, then is slated to speak at an :{evening reception on :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{school "reform":(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: jointly hosted by the Center for Education Reform (CER) and the Jack Kemp Foundation (JKF).

If Pence had time to stay for a few task force meetings, here are some of the new "model bills" he would find voted on behind closed doors by ALEC legislators alongside corporate lobbyists and representatives of special interest groups that are part of the State Policy Network (SPN).

Second Chances for Failing Charter Schools

The for-profit education companies that help fund ALEC, like K12, Inc., have a track record of poor results that tends to result in a high rate of school closures. K12, which was founded in part by junk bond fraudster felon Michael Milken, has a seat and a vote on ALEC's corporate board.

Two new bills being considered by what ALEC now dubs its "Education and Workforce Development Task Force" could help poorly performing charters stay open without having to improve.

Under the Assessment Choice Act, instead of using a uniform assessment for students statewide, charters' authorizers would take their pick from a "menu" of tests, unlike traditional public schools.

If propping up test scores isn't enough to save a charter from closure, the "Student and Family Fair Notice and Impact Statement Act" promises to add new hurdles. Before closing or restructuring a charter school, this act would not just require that families be notified. It would also create a public hearing process in which parents, teachers, and "experts" could give testimony about the school, and the charter board would be allowed to suggest a response plan.

In case it wasn't obvious that the bill is meant to keep the charter in operation, the drafter of that model bill added:

"[drafting note: it should be clear the school can present an alternative for supporters of the school to rally around.]"

School privatization proponents have slowly been dropping the pretense that the "school choice" movement is about helping underprivileged children. At a workshop titled "The Path to Universal Choice: From Theory to Passage to Implementation," lawmakers will be schooled on how to "open up more options to the middle class."

ALEC Aims to Silence Political Speech With Anti-Divestment Bill

While ALEC purports to support "limited government," its bills show that is code for unlimited corporate power, even from democratic control by stockholders.

For example, ALEC bills have leveraged right-wing ALEC control of state legislatures to try to stifle political movements that are winning the battle for public opinion, as CMD has previously reported in its coverage of ALEC's preemption strategy, among other areas.

This ALEC meeting includes a proposal opposing the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which has been growing in strength, especially on college campuses.

The BDS Movement is an international campaign to use economic pressure to push the state of Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories and to allow Palestinian refugees the right of return to their homes.

While a healthy public debate is ongoing about the pros and cons of BDS, ALEC's proposal as described doesn't merely express opposition to the movement. Instead, it apparently aims to silence political speech and activity:

"The goal of the resulting model policy will be to create disincentives to engaging in (and prohibit to the extent possible) secondary boycott activities."

ALEC host Indiana and a handful of other states have passed similar anti-boycott bills, which the American Civil Liberties Union has criticized as unconstitutional limits on speech.

This is all par for the course for ALEC, which opposed anti-Apartheid sanctions, as CMD's Nick Surgey uncovered with Calvin Sloan. ALEC has long opposed citizen stockholder movements to urge socially responsible investing.

Still Attacking Public Sector Unions After Losing in the Supreme Court

Earlier this year, a split U.S. Supreme Court left standing a lower court's decision to uphold public sector union fees in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. As CMD documented, ALEC sibling group SPN organized anti-union protests at the Court before the case was decided.

Undaunted, ALEC's "Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development" Task Force is presenting a combined version of its long-standing "Right to Work" Act and Public Employee Choice Act. The new version has been re-branded the "Friedrichs Public Employee Freedom Act" to try to get more mileage from the case. Its namesakeRebecca Friedrichs is a photogenic school teacher and rightwing activist who tried to pave the way for free-riders to get out of union dues. Friedrichs herself is an invited speaker at the conference.

To advance this agenda, the task force meeting will hear just from proponents at a presentation titled, "A State Strategy toProtect Public Employees' Free Speech Rightsin the Wake of Friedrichs v. California Teachers' Association." The presentation will likely unfold the next steps of ALEC's Koch-y anti-union strategy.

Leaning Hard on Attorneys General to Block Climate Change and Environmental Protections...

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http://www.alternet.org/how-billionaires-are-successfully-fooling-us-destroying-public-education-and-why-privatization

How Billionaires Are Successfully Fooling Us Into Destroying Public Education—and Why Privatization Is a Terrible Idea

The billionaire-backed privatization movement is stealthily advancing an undemocratic agenda, cloaked in deceptive rhetoric, that the public is not aware of and does not understand.

By Diane Ravitch / Basic Books July 21, 2016

The following is an excerpt from the new, expanded edition of  The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch (Basic Books, 2016): 

Something unprecedented is happening to American public education. A powerful, well-funded, well-organized movement is seeking to privatize significant numbers of public schools and destroy the teaching profession. This movement is not a conspiracy; it operates in the open. But its goals are masked by deceptive rhetoric. It calls itself a “reform” movement, but its true goal is privatization.

This movement has had strange bedfellows.Some of its funders and promoters on the far right of the political spectrum are motivated by ideological contempt for the public sector; others earnestly believe they are providing better choices for poor children “trapped in failing schools.” Still others believe that elected local school boards are incompetent and should be replaced by private management, or that the private sector is inherently more innovative and effective than the public sector. And some are motivated by greed, while others are motivated by religious conviction. These strange bedfellows have included the US Department of Education (during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama); major foundations and think tanks, both conservative and centrist; billionaires committed to free-market solutions—and certain they know what is best because they are so rich; entrepreneurs hoping to make money from school privatization or by selling technology to replace teachers; the far-right American Legisla­tive Exchange Council (ALEC), which has drafted model legislation to promote corporate interests and to expand the privatization of almost all government services, including education; and numerous governors and legislators (mostly but not exclusively Republicans) who want schools to operate in a free-market system of school choice.

The privatization movement pretends that it is bravely fighting "the status quo," but having captured policymakers at both the federal and state levels, as well as think tanks, the nation's wealthiest foundations, a coterie of billionaires, and major editorial boards, this movement is the status quo. It is stealthily advancing an undemocratic agenda, cloaked in deceptive rhetoric, that the public is not aware of and does not understand.

This combination of money and political power has been potent in advancing school vouchers, which were once considered a cranky right­ wing extremist idea, but have recently been enacted in a score of states. Vouchers are seldom now called vouchers, because voters have consis­tently rejected them: in 2007, vouchers were defeated by a margin of 62-38 in the red state of Utah, and Florida turned them down in 2012 by 58-42. Thus, the promoters of vouchers enact them through the legislature without holding a referendum and try to hide their purpose by calling them "opportunity scholarships," "tax credits," or "education savings accounts." Whatever the name, the result is the same: these programs transfer public money to private and religious schools, even when the state constitution (for example, in Nevada and Indiana) specifically prohibits it.

This same movement—unfortunately bipartisan—has encouraged the growth of privately managed charter schools, which are marketed as superior to public schools (although they usually are not). Charter schools are a less controversial form of privatization than vouchers be­cause they do not involve church-state issues. And yet charter schools eliminate democratic control of schools because they are privately man­ aged and in some cases controlled by out-of-state corporate chains­ sometimes nonprofit, sometimes for-profit. In many states, the charter schools get no better results in terms of student test scores than the lowest-performing traditional public schools, and sometimes they are even worse than the lowest-performing public schools. Charter schools are supposed to be innovative, but their most effective innovations to date consist of choosing their students carefully, excluding or removing students who might get low test scores, and enforcing boot-camp discipline on those who remain.

This well-funded campaign to shift public dollars to charters and vouchers has had a damaging effect on public schools. The money for choice schools is taken away from the schools that enroll a majority of students, reducing their budgets and causing them to lose teachers, services, and programs. Some school districts, like Philadelphia, teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, having cut their services to students (for example, closing libraries and reducing the number of school nurses) and increased class sizes because of budget cuts and the drain on their resources caused by charters. The greater good of the overwhelming majority of students is sacrificed to satisfy the privatizers’ ideological commitment to “choice.”

The campaign for privatization is sustained by billionaires and mega-millionaires who fund charters, vouchers, and school choice advocacy groups and contribute large sums of money to candidates and elected officials who support school choice.The same people and groups who support privatization have fought legal battles to end tenure for teachers and eliminate collective bargaining, which deprives teachers of academic freedom and any voice in the conditions of their workplace. The privatizers hope to establish a free market for schooling where people think of themselves as consumers, not as citizens who have an obligation to educate all the children in their community. They believe that teachers should serve as at-will employees, constantly fearful of losing their jobs. Competition, they believe, will improve the schools, although there is no evidence that this belief is true even after twenty-five years of experience with charters and vouchers. In Michigan, for example, the state encourages schools and districts to compete for funding by attracting students; as a result, every district spends $100,000 or more to market its wares and poach students from neighboring districts. Millions are spent to lure students, with no evidence that it produces better education.

Turning public education into a free-market system of choice is a terrible idea. No high-performing nation in the world has done this.

In a democratic society, all citizens are responsible for paying taxes to educate the next generation, even those who have no children. Public education is a public service available to all. When education becomes a consumer marketplace, every family is on its own in choosing a school. Moreover, the general community feels no sense of civic responsibility for private choices. When it comes time to approve a bond issue, why should the public support a system of private choices? In other words: Why should people who have no children, or whose children are no longer in school, pay for private choices? Those who demand "school choice" give little thought to these consequences of their advocacy; they do not fret about their role in the likely destruction of a demo­cratic institution.

The purpose of American education is to prepare our children for the duties of citizenship in a democracy. The federal and state policies of the recent past have aimed to turn education into a competition for higher test scores, despite the fact that testing always favors the advantaged over the disadvantaged. The creation of competing publicly funded sectors—one public, the other nonpublic—has not improved education. Instead, it has divided communities. And it has created a booming and politically powerful "education industry," where the big prize is profits, not educated citizens.

Adapted excerpt from The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch. Copyright © 2010. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education.

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https://dianeravitch.net/2012/11/24/checker-finn-opposes-the-for-profit-model-in-education/

edison fail ohio also ECOT (kasich?)

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One could be forgiven for thinking "National Charter School Week" already happened. The made-up "National School Choice Week" was just 14 weeks ago. It's an easy mistake to make.

For education observers in the U.S., every week seems like Charter School Week. As billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, and others put millions of dollars per year into a "reform" movement that undermines and supplants truly public education, the government diverts more and more of taxpayer money to charters and other variations of "choice."

In October 2015, the Center for Media and Democracy published "Charter School Black Hole," a special investigation of federal charter school spending and failures. That report found that the federal government has spent at least $3.7 billion on charters.

Last Friday, President Obama issued a proclamation recognizing this week, May 1-7, as National Charter School Week. The proclamation asserted that, "Over the past 7 years, my Administration's commitment of resources to the growth of charter schools has enabled a significant expansion of educational opportunity, enabling tens of thousands of children to attend high-quality public charter schools."

Indeed, for the U.S. Department of Education, National Charter School Week comes every day.

According to a PowerPoint presentation DOE produced in December 2015, the department's charter schools program has four purposes. "Evaluating the effects of public charter schools" is only one purpose, and not the first. Most important is: 1) "Providing financial assistance for the planning, program design and initial implementation," and there is also 3) "Expanding the number of high-quality charter schools available to students across the United States," and 4) "Encouraging states to provide support to charter schools for facilities planning."

Under the government's uncritical eye, charter schools are supported by taxpayer dollars but exempt from many of the requirements and standards of most public schools due to the way they were created through state legislation pushed by ALEC. Charter school proponents have diverted billions of taxpayer dollars from public schools to charters despite scores of documented cases of fraud and waste by charter school operators charters. Indeed, CMD's "Charter School Black Hole" report identified several hundred number of charter schools have received federal funds and closed or never opened. (See CMD's related story on its Freedom of Information Act request regarding those schools here.)

A recent report from the National Center for Education Policy at the University of Colorado-Boulder found that the performance rating of virtual charter schools is low, the schools have been lightly researched, and their growth is nonetheless robust. The report's authors wrote, "Little rigorous research has examined the inner workings of these schools, but evidence indicates that students differ from those in traditional public schools, and that school outcomes are consistently below traditional public schools. Nevertheless, enrollment growth has continued, assisted by vigorous advertising campaigns, corporate lobbying, and favorable legislation."

ALEC is a pay-to-play operation that is instrumental in lobbying for state legislation that operationalizes the billionaire wish list for virtual schools and school privatization. ALEC is funded by private corporations to get direct access to state legislators to advance their corporate legislative agenda in the state houses, as CMD has documented through its award-winning ALECexposed investigation.

No story about National Charter School Week is complete if it doesn't mention ALEC and the wealthy interests that have bought and paid for the "education reform" policies that were necessary to create most of these schools in the first place.

ALEC Exposed

Education

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http://www.globalpossibilities.org/were-at-war-says-organizer-behind-education-protests-sweeping-the-country/

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http://www.alternet.org/education/how-bill-gates-and-his-billionaire-pals-used-their-enormous-wealth-start-privatizing

Charitable Plutocracy: Bill Gates, Washington State and the Nuisance of Democracy

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Today’s multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders.

By Joanne Barkan / Nonprofit Quarterly April 27, 2016

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This article was first published in the Nonprofit Quarterly (spring 2016; vol. 23, no. 1).

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Once upon a time, the super-wealthy endowed their tax-exempt charitable foundations and then turned them over to boards of trustees to run. The trustees would spend the earnings of the endowment to pursue a typically grand but wide-open mission written into the foundation’s charter—like The Rockefeller Foundation’s 1913 mission “to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world.” Today’s multi-billionaires are a different species of philanthropist; they keep tight control over their foundations while also operating as major political funders—think Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, or Walmart heiress Alice Walton. They aim to do good in the world, but each defines “good” idiosyncratically in terms of specific public policies and political goals. They translate their wealth, the work of their foundations, and their celebrity as doers-of-good into influence in the public sphere—much more influence than most citizens have.

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Call it charitable plutocracy—a peculiarly American phenomenon, increasingly problematic and in need of greater scrutiny. Like all forms of plutocracy, this one conflicts with democracy, and exactly how these philanthropists coordinate tax-exempt grantmaking with political funding for maximum effect remains largely obscure. What follows is a case study of the way charitable plutocracy operates on the ground. It’s a textbook example of the tug-of-war between government by the people and uber-philanthropists as social engineers.

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The Case of Bill Gates and Washington State

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This story begins in 1995, when the Washington State House of Representatives first considered legislation that would enable private individuals and organizations to obtain charters to create their own K–12 schools. These were to be taxpayer-funded schools, but privately run and exempt from many of the regulations governing district (regular) public schools. The funding would come from the resources of regular public schools: each student would “carry” his or her per-child funding out of the district system to a charter school.

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The bill died in the state senate, so supporters went directly to voters with a ballot initiative to enable charter schools. The campaign attracted little money on either side, but turnout was high because the vote took place on the same day as the 1996 presidential election. Washingtonians rejected charter schools decisively: 64.4 percent against, 35.6 percent in favor.1

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State representatives kept trying. They proposed new bills in 1997, 1998, and 1999, but got the same results: success in the lower chamber, failure in the senate.2

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Wariness of charter schools didn’t mean that Washingtonians were completely satisfied with existing schools or feared change. Voters had legitimate concerns. Charter schools, they worried, would divert tax revenue from already underfunded district schools, especially those serving low-income and minority students. In addition, schools under private management might be less transparent and less accountable to the public than Washington’s district schools, which were overseen by locally elected boards.

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Charter supporters tried another ballot initiative in 2000, and, for the first time, attracted the backing of a multi-billionaire philanthropist. Paul Allen had cofounded Microsoft in 1975 and The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation in 1988.3 The state places no limits on individual campaign contributions for ballot measures, so Allen was able to give $3.275 million of the total $3.4 million raised by the pro-charter side. Opponents raised only about $11,000. Outspent 309 to 1, they still defeated the initiative, although the millions given in support of charters shrank the margin of victory. The vote was 51.8 percent against charters and 48.2 percent in favor.4

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In the next four years, the national context shifted. The debate around public education intensified as a controversial market-based education-reform movement grew stronger. “Ed-reformers” claimed that U.S. public schools were failing; that the culprits were bad teachers, teachers unions, and government bureaucracy; and that the private sector, using public resources, could run better schools. They promoted competition among schools to force out the weakest and measuring educational success via students’ standardized test scores.

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The education-reform movement in general, and charter schools in particular, attracted a new wave of philanthropists, many of whom had made fortunes in high-tech industries and finance. Although they had no experience as educators, they aimed to “disrupt” and rebuild public schooling for urban low-income and minority children. They embraced the idea that giving grants to K–12 reform projects corresponded with investing capital in a business. They described their philanthropy in terms of strategic investments to maximize returns and data collection to verify results. Having succeeded in business, they reasoned, they would succeed in education. They came to see funding education-reform candidates and ballot initiatives as part of the same effort.

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The Washington legislature finally passed a charter school law in 2004. Opponents responded by petitioning for a ballot measure to repeal the law. Mobilized by the teachers unions, League of Women Voters, state Democratic Party, and the Seattle School Board, they raised $1.3 million for the campaign. The unions contributed the most: the Washington Education Association gave $601,000, and the National Education Association gave $500,000.5

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Charter school supporters raised three times as much—$3.9 million. Most of it came from three education-reform political funder-philanthropists, who donated about $1 million each: Bill Gates, who had recently made education reform the main focus of his domestic philanthropy; Walmart heir John T. Walton (from Wyoming), who advocated charters and tax-funded vouchers for parents to use for private-school tuition; and Donald Fisher (from California), founder of Gap and a major donor to the KIPP chain of charter schools...

Initiative Measure No. 1240 concerns creation of a public charter school system. This measure would authorize up to forty publicly-funded charter schools open to all students, operated through approved, nonreligious, nonprofit organizations, with government oversight; and modify certain laws applicable to them as public schools.

...

39 pp boiled down to:

Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]17

The coalition of advocates behind the 2012 initiative included some well-known grantees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: for example, Stand for Children (about $9 million in grants from 2005 through 2012)18 and the League of Education Voters, a subgrantee of the Alliance for Education ($733,285 in grants for 2011 and 2012).19

To collect the signatures, the coalition hired PCI Consultants, Inc., of Calabasas, California, a “full service petition and field management firm” with experience in Washington State.20 The drive began in mid-June, which left just twenty-one days to collect 241,153 valid signatures—the shortest drive in state history (except for one in 1973).21 Success depended on quick access to millions of dollars for an all-out effort.

The drive raised $2.3 million and delivered about 350,000 signatures by the July 6 deadline.22 One signature gatherer from California told the Seattle Times that he was among about four hundred out-of-staters who had been hired. Coalition spokespeople declined to confirm or deny the information.23

According to the Public Disclosure Commission in Washington State, funders for the signature drive included Gates ($1 million), Alice Walton (from Arkansas, $600,000), Mike and Jackie Bezos (parents of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, $500,000), venture capitalist Nicolas Hanauer ($450,000), Katherine Binder (chair of EMFCO Holdings, $200,000), Paul Allen’s Vulcan, Inc. ($100,000), and Reed Hastings, from California (Netflix cofounder and KIPP charter schools board member, $100,000).24

As soon as Initiative 1240 was certified for the November vote, the race to stockpile more money began.

The pro-charter side collected another $9.1 million for the fall campaign. More than 70 percent of the additional money came from just six donors: Gates ($2.075 million), Vulcan, Inc. ($1.5 million), Alice Walton ($1.1 million), Mike and Jackie Bezos ($600,000), Hanauer ($600,000), and Connie Ballmer (wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, $500,000).25

Opposition to the charter initiative was broad but not deep-pocketed. The organizations calling for a “no” vote included the Seattle King County NAACP, El Centro de la Raza, the Japanese American Citizens League Board, the League of Women Voters, the Washington State PTA, local elected school boards, the Association of Washington School Principals, the Washington Association of School Administrators, many district and county Democratic Party organizations, the Washington State Labor Council, the Washington Education Association, and other state and local unions.26

The “no” coalition raised just over $727,400.27 The largest donations came from the National Education Association ($250,000) and the Washington Education Association ($200,000).28 According to KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio’s blog, “Teachers’ union officials say…when it comes to the big money behind the charter school initiative, they just can’t compete.”29

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A new review of documents provided to the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch from the state ofColorado shows close relationships between the agency charged with administering public education and the growing charter school industry.

The Feds Have Awarded more than $82 Million for Charters in Colorado since 2010

Last fall, the U.S. Department of Education approved a Charter School Program-State Education Agency (CSP-SEA) grant to the state of Colorado for $36,359,999. The federal government previously awarded the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) $45,982,596 in 2010.

The new grant approved in September 2015 is for a shorter period and thus amounts to increased federal funding for Colorado charters.

This increase comes at a time when traditional public schools for all children are facing many budget challenges—due in part to continuing problems caused by the "TABOR" law, a controversial budget law peddled by the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a pay-to-play operation funded in part by proponents of privatizing public education, such as ALEC corporate board members K12 Inc., a for-profit virtual school corporation, and Koch Industries, which is controlled by billionaires Charles and David Koch who have spent decades peddling policies hostile to even the idea of public schools. (ALEC recently held a session that included how to promote the TABOR bill under a different name since it has caused so many problems.)

The new grant announcement for Colorado and seven other states was marred by the fed's decision to approve such grants despite major scandals over the misuse of charter funds in several states--including in Ohio where poor charter testing results had been manipulated by a state official—Dave Hansen—who previously worked as a top lobbyist for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (and whose spouse, Beth Hansen, is the manager of Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign).

Colorado is slated to receive more than $11 million in 2015-2016, the first year of its renewed CSP-SEA grant.

CMD has requested materials from the CDE about its handling of the initial set of CSP-SEA grants and charters, as part of an examination of accountability for those taxpayer monies. CMD found that the federal government has spent more than $3.7 billion in Americans' taxes fueling a charter school industry in the states that is exerting increasing political influence on state and federal agencies. Colorado is complying with state sunshine laws in providing timely and responsive documents.

CMD's review of the emails and documents from Colorado reveals that the charter school industry and the state oversight agencies are even more intertwined than initially believed.

"Volunteers" Reviewing Who Should Get Charter $$$ Hail from . . . Charter World

For example, the records show that "volunteer" reviewers who evaluate and recommend which Colorado charter schools get to share the state multi-million dollar federal grant have direct connections to charter schools and are proponents of the charter school movement.

Based on an email recently disclosed from October 2014, here are the names and brief bios of people receiving an email from the state to Colorado Charter School Program grant reviewers who would be scoring charter schools seeking funding from taxpayer moneys. There are two main categories of people on the list: 1) people who worked directly for charters or the charter school industry and 2) people who worked for state or county agencies in support of charters.

1) Charter Grant Application Reviewers who Work for Charters or Charter Consultancy Companies

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13079/colorado%E2%80%99s-not-so-independent-oversight-charter-schools#sthash.V7se6FBq.dpuf

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http://www.alternet.org/education/charter-schools-have-discipline-problem

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http://www.alternet.org/education/2016-candidates-take-confusing-or-disappointing-stances-charter-schools

With all the presidential campaign talk about inequality and making Wall Street bow down to Main Street, you might think candidates—at least Democrats—would have lots to say about one of the biggest privatization trends in America today: the takeover of K-12 public schools by billionaire-backed, corporate-style charter schools.

But they don’t. As Diane Ravitch, a nationally known public education advocate, author and blogger recently said, “The 2016 presidential campaign is notable for the near total absence of discussion of K-12 education.” Ravitch, who was Assistant Secretary of Education from 1991-'93 under President George H.W. Bush, has extensively noted how federal policies in the past 15 years have been a disaster for public schools, from overreliance on standardized tests to the taxpayer-subsidized growth of privately run charter schools, especially the national franchises dominating the industry.

“With all this turmoil in the nation’s schools, caused by Washington policies, you would think that the candidates might have something to say about their plans to bolster the public schools,” Ravitch said. “If you thought so, you would be wrong. The Republicans all endorse both vouchers and privately managed charter schools, which are heavily funded by the Koch brothers, the Walton Foundation, and others who see them as a way to get rid of teachers’ unions. The Democrats, with only minor digressions, have avoided talking about schools, although they are quite eager to talk about preschool and higher education.”

Actually, it’s murkier than that. On the Democratic side, the last time Bernie Sanders was asked about charters (in Ohio just before its March 15 primary), he so badly bungled the answer, mangling the distinction between locally created charters from those privately run by national chains, that it led to articles asking, “What does that mean?” In prior remarks, however, such as when answering an American Federation of Teachers’ questionnaire last summer, Sanders was clearer, saying, “I believe charters should be held to the same standards of transparency as public schools, and that these standards should also apply to the non-profit and for-profit entities that organize charter schools.” And before the New Hampshire primary, he said, “I’m not in favor of privately run charter schools… I think we invest in teachers and we invest in public education.”   

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, who has a long history of backing trends such as more student testing and embracing the charter industry, is now saying—like the nation’s largest teachers’ unions that endorsed her last year—that the corporate-run side of the privatization movement has not been positive for public education.In South Carolina last November, Clinton noted that she had “supported the idea of charter schools” for many years, but pulled back as she cited some glaring shortcomings.

“Most charter schools—I don’t want to say every one—but most charters, they don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids. Or if they do, they don’t keep them,” Clinton said. “And so the public schools are often in a no-win situation, because they do, thankfully, take everybody, and then they don’t get the resources or the help and support that they need to be able to take care of every child’s education.”       

As is often the case when presidential candidates give an issue glancing attention, charter lobbyists were quick to condemn Clinton’s remarks, while hoping she would return to their fold. Politico.com reported a campaign spokesman “did not address the evolution in Clinton’s views, but instead said… she had for decades ‘been a strong supporter of both public charter schools and an unflinching advocate for traditional pubic schools.’” 

In other words, Clinton’s spinners tried to appease both sides. On the anti-charter side are public school advocates and teacher unions; on the pro-charter side are billionaire funders like Arkansas’ Walton Family Foundation, underwritten with profits from Walmart (whose board Clinton once sat on) and Los Angeles-based entrepreneur Eli Broad, who has a long history of supporting charters and the Clintons dating back to 1990s. Broad was so upset by Clinton’s South Carolina remarks that he refused to donate to a pro-Clinton super PAC, the Wall Street Journal reported in December, “and only changed his mind after personal reassurances from former President Bill Clinton and campaign chairman John Podesta that Mrs. Clinton will support charter schools.”

These less-than-ideal positions are from Democrats, who, when compared to Republican presidential candidates, are at least saying there are problems with corporate charter schools, including a lack of transparency; private and for-profit operators running schools; cherry-picking better students; and diverting scarce taxpayer funds away from deserving schools. The Republicans, in contrast, seemingly have little patience or respect for the American tradition of public education and locally elected school boards.

Republican Candidates

The Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s statement on public education has left “experts fearful, curious… and baffled,” according to EdWeek.org’s recent summary of his thoughts, which it called “mostly a black box.” According to the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which tracks education policy, Trump previously has called public schools “competition-free zones” and embraced charter schools, along with vouchers, in which parents get taxpayer funds to send their kids to any school, including private ones. “We’ve got to bring on the competition, open the schoolhouse doors and let the parents choose,” Trump said.

But just what federal education policy would be under Trump largely remains a guess, although it appears that he is quick to oppose federal involvement. Last fall he told Fox News that eliminating the U.S. Department of Education was one way he’d cut federal spending. Trump has also railed against the Common Core testing standards for English and math, calling them a “disaster” in his June 2015 announcing his campaign, largely because he perceives them as more federal government overreach. 

Texas senator Ted Cruz has taken a series of similar right-wing views. He too wants to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and has called school choice “the civil rights issue of the 21st century,” according to the Fordham Institute’s summary. Cruz wants to access taxpayer funds for parents to send their kids to any K-12 school—public, charter, religious, or be home-schooled. “Education reform, school choice, and home schooling have been passions of mine for decades… Every parent has the right to educate his or her children—to provide the home, to teach the values that the parents believe are right.”        

The third GOP contender is Ohio Gov. John Kasich, whose website’s page on education page touts his “experience and results like no other”—an astounding statement, since Kasich’s record on charters is marked by some of the sector’s worst scandals. “His home state’s notoriously problematic charter school sector is often held up as an example of what can go wrong,” wrote Politico.com, which cited Ohio’s charter program director omitting bad online school test scores in multimillion-dollar federal grant applications, “mid-year school closures, allegations of financial improprieties and charter schools ‘sponsor shopping’ to avoid scrutiny,” among other issues.

Last year, the Ohio legislature pushed back on Kasich’s deregulated charter school regime and imposed new accountability standards—after the owners of a school that closed kept assets bought at taxpayer expense, fueling a corruption scandal. But as Politico noted, while Kasich eventually supported the reforms, they did not originate with him. Indeed, even conservative Ohio columnists have said their charter industry has been a showcase of mismanagement and self-enrichment—even as they’ve gone on to defend their governor.

“Ohio’s overall reputation is of a place that cares more about protecting for-profit charter school operators than it does about children who attend those schools,” Brent Larkin wrote in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “And Kasich hasn’t been nearly as outspoken as he should be in attempts to repair that reputation.”

When it comes to the 2016 presidential campaign trail, none of the candidates—including the Democrats—have been as outspoken on charters and privatizing education as public school advocates like Diane Ravitch would like.

“Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton… are notably silent about the Bush-Obama policies that have put standardized testing at the center of schooling and about the federal government’s favoritism toward charters, despite the ongoing revelation of charter scandals, frauds, and lack of accountability,” Ravitch said. “Clinton has been equivocal about charters. Sanders was asked about them at the Ohio Town Hall, and he responded that he supports ‘public charter schools.’ This was an incoherent response since all charters call themselves ‘public charter schools,’ even when they operate for-profit and are run by national corporate charter chains.”    

“There has been a lack of discussion of K-12 issues, and much of the discussion has been confused,” said Brandon Wright, Fordham Institute’s editorial director. “No president, for example, could ‘end Common Core,’ as some Republicans have said. And there are no ‘private charter schools,’ a phrase Bernie Sanders recently used. I wish there was more discussion, because what candidates say can influence policies, or at the very least draw attention to them.”

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http://www.prwatch.org/charter-school-black-hole

Madison, WI (CMD) – Today the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is releasing a special report on its year-long investigation into charter schools spending in the United States. You can access the full report "Charter School Black Hole" here.

CMD, a national investigative group that conducts in-depth investigations into the influence of corporations, trade groups, and PR firms on media and democracy, found that the public does not have ready access to key information about how their federal and state taxes are being spent to fuel the charter school industry since charters began almost 25 years ago.

Indeed, no one even knew how much the federal government had spent on its program designed to boost the charter sector. So CMD reviewed more than two decades of federal authorizations and appropriations to calculate the sum, which is now more than $3.7 billion—as noted in this new report. CMD also found that the federal government was not providing the public with a list of all the charter schools that received federal tax monies and how much.

CMD also found that many states have not provided the public with ready information about the amounts of federal funding each charter has received under the federal "Charter School Program" (CSP) for state education agencies (SEAs), and that most states have not provided the public with information about the amounts in state and federal tax dollars that have been diverted to charters rather than spent strengthening traditional public schools.

What is even more troubling is how difficult it is to find essential information on how some charters have spent federal and state tax dollars, even as governments continue to increase funding for charters while slashing funds for traditional public schools. Unlike truly public schools that have to account for prospective and past spending in public budgets provided to democratically elected school boards, charter spending of tax monies is too often a black hole.

This is the largely due to the way the charter industry has been built by proponents, favoring "flexibility" over rules. That flexibility has allowed an epidemic of fraud, waste, and mismanagement that would not be tolerated in public schools. Charters are often policed—if they are really policed at all—by charter proponents, both within government agencies and within private entities tasked with oversight as "authorizers" of charters.

In this investigation, CMD pursued numerous open records requests under federal or state law about how much federal CSP money had been given to charters and how that money was spent in 12 states. As a result, CMD found that public information about funds received and spent by charters is severely lacking. It also documented how little is known about spending by closed charters, and identified "ghost" schools, where federal grants were awarded to charters that never opened.

"The bottom-line is taxpayers know far too little about how much their federal tax dollars are being used to fund charters and there is far too little information provided by states about how tax monies are being spent by charters or by for-profit firms they are tied to," said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of CMD. "Neither the federal government nor the states require charters to publish that information on their websites and neither the federal or state governments we examined publish that information themselves. Even aside from serious questions about academic performance by charters—especially online charters—the lack of real accountability remains a real problem for kids and families, as more and more people and corporations have sought to get a piece of pie, a revenue stream from taxpayer money, to operate or assist charters."

Below are a few key findings from the report:

Michigan: In 2011 and 2012, $3.7 million in federal taxpayer money was awarded to 25 Michigan "ghost" schools that never even opened to students. The organizations behind these schools received at least $1.7 million, according to the state expenditure database. WestEd—a private company that contracts with the U.S. Department of Education to monitor how states comply with federal regulations—flagged this as a potential problem, but the agency did little to address the problem. After verbal assurances that this would not happen again, the federal agency assured the Michigan Department of Education "that there will not be any additional follow-up."

Ohio: Out of the 88 schools created by planning and implementation grants under CSP between 2008 and 2013, at least 15 closed within a few years; a further seven schools never even opened. These charters received more than $4 million in federal taxpayer money. Despite this track record, Ohio landed the biggest one-year grant by far in the 2015 competition for federal funding: $32.6 million. CMD can reveal that part of the reason Ohio won the grant was a glowing endorsement from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)—an organization that had previously referred to the charter system in Ohio as "broken." But NACSA was more than willing to take that back as long as the Ohio Department of Education signed a $40,000-a-year deal. The deal was brokered by former NACSA senior executive and lobbyist David Hansen only days before he resigned as head of the Ohio Office of Quality School Choice amid accusations of having manipulated charter school performance data.

California:More than $4.7 million in federal taxpayer money was handed out to create charter schools that subsequently closed within a few years. CMD's investigation found that California's record on charters is marked by continued failures, including squandering of taxpayer money, along with deference to unaccountable authorizers and resistance to federal efforts to mandate better state oversight.

Wisconsin:More than $2.5 million in CSP money was used to create charter schools that shuttered shortly thereafter. In addition to the school closings, at least one of the schools created by federal charter school money was a former religious school that has since "converted" to charter status so as to be eligible for funding, an audit obtained by CMD shows. There appears to have been no regular evaluations about whether such conversions in Wisconsin--and also Texas--affect the content of the instruction or not.

Indiana: At least $2.2 million was awarded to charters that either closed or never opened. In addition, emails obtained by CMD through a public records request to Gov. Pence's office found troubling examples of how the private charter sector, notably for-profit chain Charter Schools USA, influences on policy-making.

New York State:CMD discovered that almost every single application for the New York subgrants was written by the same multi-million-dollar charter consultancy firm: Charter School Business Management. The nature of CSP funding competition means that charter schools relying on private contractors for services, such as grant-writing and budgeting, can gain a competitive edge.

Colorado:State leadership responsible for managing the federal charter school grants fought legislation that would have advanced charter school oversight and accountability, emails obtained by CMD show.

The report also reviews federal charter spending in Arizona, District of Columbia, Florida, Texas and Utah.

Read the full report here.

Click here for a complete state-by-state list of charter schools that were created by CSP SEA seed money in the 2010-2015 grant cycle. Dozens of these "schools" never opened to students in the first place, and many of the schools that did open have since closed.

For an updated tally of the $3.7 billion disbursed under the CSP umbrella since the inception of the program, click here.

Click here for emails from Ohio's Office of Quality School Choice, detailing the role NACSA and David Hansen, who resigned in July amid accusations of having manipulated data on charter school "success," played in securing the biggest federal charter grant in 2015.

For further information contact: Jonas Persson, Jonas@prwatch.org.

Special

Education

Special Report

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cmd_total_federal_charter_funding_oct_2015.xls	23.5 KB
new_charter_school_black_hole_report_oct_21_2015.pdf	1.11 MB
csp_sea_grant_universe_from_foia_and_orr_101621.xls	348.5 KB

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http://www.prwatch.org/comment/36416#comment-36416

Ohio state education officials are now admitting that Ohio has almost ten times as many failing charter schools as the state initially claimed.

This revelation comes as Ohio tries to hang onto a $71 million federal charter school grant in the wake of scandals over misleading the grant application reviewers and breaking state law by altering charter school performance statistics. That was the largest grant award by the U.S. Department of Education last year.

Ohio newspapers and the Center for Media and Democracy reported last October that the Ohio Department of Education's claims about the excellence of the state's charter-school system were intentionally misleading.

In the state's July 2015 grant application, education officials reported that in the 2012-13 school year Ohio had no "poor performing" charters, even though about a third of the schools didn't meet any of the standards on state report cards and 60 percent earned D's or F's on a measure of how students perform on state tests.

The grant application also said an automatic-closure law would shut down any failing charter schools without disclosing that the law will not be in effect for several years.

Meanwhile, it turns out that then-Ohio charter school chief David Hansen, who drafted the grant application, also rigged charter school sponsor evaluations to improve their ratings. Hansen resigned July 18, two days after submitting the grant request to the feds and several days after admitting he broke the law by excluding failing grades for some charter schools in the evaluations.

Hansen's wife, Beth Hansen, is Ohio Governor John Kasich's former chief of staff and the manager of Kasich's newly surging presidential campaign. She left her government post for the campaign in the midst of the scandal as the pre-primary season was beginning. Kasich has not been asked about the charter school failures in the national debates.

In the latest news, Ohio's Department of Education now says there were actually 57 poor-performing charter schools in the state in the 2013-14 school year, not six.

Its July grant application claimed there were only six.

Conversely, the state said there were 93 "high-performing charter schools" in July and now it says there are just 59.

These performance statistics are for 290 brick-and-mortar charter schools and still do not include online charters (which Hansen omitted).


These numbers were included in a January 29 letter to the federal regulators who put a hold on Ohio's charter-school grant amid the concerns. The 20-page letter is signed by interim state superintendent Lonny J. Rivera, and was the state's third response to questions from federal regulators since the review was opened.

Part of the reason Ohio won the grant in the first place was a glowing endorsement from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)—an organization that had previously referred to the charter system in Ohio as "broken."

But NACSA rethought that assessment as it signed a $40,000-a-year agreement with the Ohio Department of Education to lend assistance to the state's charter school authorizers. The deal was brokered by former NACSA senior executive and lobbyist Hansen before he resigned as head of the Ohio Office of Quality School Choice.

During his time as NACSA's top lobbyist, Hansen represented the organization at meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), touting "high quality" charters. That's the post he took after he left the "Buckeye Institute" and before Kasich put him in charge of charters for the state of Ohio.

Hansen previously led the Buckeye Institute, an Ohio "think tank" that is part of the controversial "State Policy Network" (SPN). SPN special interest groups amplify ALEC's lobbying agenda, which includes numerous bills to siphon money from traditional public schools to charters and for-profit enterprises. It should be no surprise that a virtual school corporation, K12, sits on ALEC's corporate board and has co-chaired its education task force where corporate lobbyists and special interest groups vote as equals with state legislators on bills, behind closed doors at posh resorts with fancy private parties. Before Hansen became Kasich's point person on charters, NACSA sent Hansen to ALEC to advance its charter school agenda there.

Cleveland's Plain Dealer reported last June that Hansen intentionally left F grades for online charter schools out of academic evaluations of charter school oversight agencies. Those F grades for schools run by major Republican donors would have dragged down the rating of the oversight agencies.

One of the largest such agencies in the state is the Ohio Council of Community Schools, which collects about $1.5 million in sponsor fees a year from students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and the Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy (OHDLA), an online school run by a company owned by David Brennan, a big Republican campaign donor in Ohio.

Ohio has hoped to use the $71 million in federal aid to give grants of up to $700,000 to applicants seeking to open new charter schools. That's nearly a million dollar giveaway per charter to experiments, which have often failed, while traditional public schools are facing budget cuts that hurt school children and their learning environment.

But, as CMD revealed in its "Charter School Black Hole" report last October, out of the 88 Ohio charter schools created by planning and implementation grants under the Charter School Program between 2008 and 2013, at least 15 closed within a few years and another seven never opened at all. These charters received more than $4 million in federal taxpayer money.

Despite this track record and despite the false and deceptive claims the state made in its application for more federal tax dollars for charters , Ohio landed the biggest one-year grant in the 2015 competition for federal funding, $32.6 million, with more planned in the coming years.

Since 2004, Ohio has been granted more than $195 million in American tax dollars by the U.S. Department of Education under the Charter School Program for State Educational Agencies (CSP-SEA). That's part of the more than $3.7 billion CMD has documented that the federal government has spent fueling the charter school industry over the past few decades.

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hedge funds

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13065/how-dfer-leaders-channel-out-state-dark-money-colorado-and-beyond

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http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13019/feds-cheerlead-charter-schools-aiding-private-philanthropy%E2%80%99s-takeover-america%E2%80%99s

With the Walton billionaires doubling down in their efforts to accelerate the charter school industry and with the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, throwing in $100 million to privatize traditional public schools, one might think that the U.S. Department of Education would be a major line of defense for America's public schools educating the most underserved students or even a bold investor in sustainable community schools that are truly public.

One would be wrong.

The U.S. Department of Education, as with the education agencies of many states, has been co-opted by the spending frenzy of the billionaire class.

It's not just the Waltons and Hastings using their fortunes to undermine public education: Eli Broad has pledged nearly a half billion dollars to privatize the public schools of Los Angeles. They are mounting a radical--or really a reactionary--effort to remake public schools into private enterprises, and charters are a key component of the transition the billionaires seek.

And editorial decisions by many in the press have aided and abetted this effort.

For example, the Walton family's press release about its new spending—which comes on top of the nearly $200 million they already spend on education "reform" each year—was widely reported, while the federal budget deal allocated $330 million more for charters was barely covered. The federal expansion of funding comes in the face of numerous scandals involving poor test results from so-called virtual charter schools and the documentation of more than $200 million of fraud and waste of taxpayer money by charter school operators.

But the billionaires' star power garnered coverage and repetition of the "reform" talking points, despite the manifest evidence of the failuresof many charter school experiments.

It's not just the press.

This movement that touts "choice"--as a more appealing frame than the "destruction" of truly public schools governed by local democracy--has been embraced by politicians who need financial support from billionaires to win their elections. And, increasingly, these political leaders have been followed into a variant of "public service" by cadres of school reform staffers and charter school cheerleaders who advance private interests.

A recent PowerPoint presentation created by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) underscores how complete that take-over is, after the federal government has itself spent billions in American tax dollars building up and buttressing the charter school industry.

Its 25-slide PowerPoint document, "The U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program Overview," is an uncritical PR document embracing a magical idea of charter schools.

While it is unclear what audience the department was targeting, it clearly shows how ED has become a propagandist for charter schools--despite the mountain of fraud and failure that investigators and bloggers have documented.

Some of the slides are comical to the point of parody. One enthusiastically asks, "Do states with the highest-performing charter schools receive [State Educational Agency] funding?" With 38 states receiving this funding, should it be surprising that some of them have some schools that test better than other charter schools that also receive funding?

Another slide says, "As of SY 2011-12, CSP-Funded Schools Serve a Similar Percentage of Students and Disabilities and Limited English Proficient Students as Traditional Schools," and then shows four lonely bar graphs. Nine percent of the students at Charter School Program-funded schools have disabilities and 11 percent at "traditional schools" do. Are percentages ever really "similar"? And can't the department's PowerPoint writers find a less defensive way to say, "Sometimes charter schools accept students with disabilities"?

With 20 years of data to draw from, many charter schools have failed and closed as the Center for Media and Democracy has noted, and many others have not been shown to boost student achievement. But as the industry has grown under federal funding, so has its lobbying muscle (largely at taxpayer expense). With each passing year the enthusiasm for charters increases among right-wing and libertarian school privatization advocates along with many of the reporters and pundits who rely on this heavily-bankrolled industry for quotes and claims.

Charter schools are supported by taxpayer dollars but exempt from many of the requirements and standards of truly public schools due to the way its architects created them through legislation peddled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Sometimes they are not governed by elected school boards and there is very little oversight concerning how they educate students or spend the money they get from the government.

Charters divert billions of taxpayer dollars from public schools and have been frequently exposed as fraudulent and wasteful. As CMD's lengthy investigation into charter school spending found, an undisclosed number of schools receiving millions in federal funds, cumulatively, have closed or never even opened. ED's PowerPoint does not tackle these thorny issues.

Instead, the very first slide of the ED PowerPoint asks, "What is the purpose and history of the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program?" It turns out that "evaluating the effects of public charter schools" is only the second of "four statutory purposes."

The other three, apparently independent of the effects the schools have, are 1) "Providing financial assistance for the planning, program design and initial implementation," and 3) "Expanding the number of high-quality charter schools available to students across the United States," and 4) "Encouraging states to provide support to charter schools for facilities planning."

In other words, once ED evaluates "the effects" of charter schools and finds that they do not help students or that they collectively weaken the state of public education in general, it still has a duty to fund them, create more of them, and get states to fund them. That explains a lot.

Slide number 4 reveals that the ED's Charter School Program has provided more than $3.3 billion to "fund the start-up, replication and expansion of public charter schools."

Very interesting.

CMD was unable to extract this number from DOE despite inquiries and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests since 2014. Ultimately, CMD calculated the amount at more than $3.3 billion(not adjusted for inflation) earlier in 2015, and more than $3.7 billion with the latest round of spending.

In October 2015, after waiting for incomplete answers from ED and state agencies, CMD published "Charter School Black Hole," a special investigation of federal charter school spending and its links to ALEC.

Two months later, on Christmas Eve 2015, EDreleased a list of the charter schools that had received federal funding since 2006. The list was incomplete, the dollar figures were still unclear, and everyone knows that you release information on Christmas Eve because you don't want anyone to see it. Still, it was something.

Now, it turns out, ED may have been tracking this information all along. The $3.3 billion it identifies is pretty close to the $3.3 billion CMD initially found after painstakingly combing through more than two decades of congressional appropriations. If you were a ED PowerPoint writer you might even call these numbers "similar." (Based on new appropriations by Congress, CMD has noted that the current tally is more than $3.7 billion.)

What is far too similar is the extent to which the Department of Education's charter school agenda matches that of the anti-education, pro-privatization movement that funds and promotes so much of the misinformation about public education.

This movement already gets all the support it needs from the Waltons, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, Bill and Melinda Gates, and tech billionaires.

Let's put the taxpayers' money to better use.

(This op-ed was first published by Alternet.org, here.)

"National School Choice Week" Fueled by Major Right-Wing Funders and Corporate Lobby Groups

By PRWatch Editors -- With 32 governors proclaiming the week "School Choice Week," #NationalSchoolChoiceWeek became a big deal, and not by accident.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13024/national-school-choice-week-fueled-major-right-wing-funders-and-corporate-lobby

MADISON, WI -- With 32 governors proclaiming this week "School Choice Week," and more than 16,000 scheduled events listed on the promotional website, #NationalSchoolChoiceWeek has become a big deal, and not by accident.

Launched five years ago by the Gleason Family Foundation—which spent more than $4.3 million on the project in 2014—the week has grown rapidly through the backing of advocacy groups and deep pockets of funders focused on promoting charters, vouchers, and tax credits that aid private schools, including religious and for-profit ventures.

In federal and state budgets, "school choice" policies often divert or reduce Americans’ tax dollars available for traditional public schools that educate our most underserved students or for investment in sustainable and innovative community schools that are truly public.

Today, for example, the State Policy Network (SPN) is holding a "Tweet-up" to promote school "choice" and its fight "to limit government and advance market-friendly public policy at the state and local levels," and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is using the week to pitch a "revolutionary" universal education savings account bill for Washington, DC, introduced by Senator Ted Cruz.

The Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group on corporate influence on public policy, is urging reporters to examine the interests behind the PR push on school choice.

"The National School Choice Week website’s Partners page provides a who’s-who gallery of Koch network groups, corporations, and billionaires promoting privatization," said Lisa Graves, CMD’s Executive Director, adding: "although the week features many local events, it is backed by national entities, some of which are hostile to the idea of public schools and whose goals have included full privatization. No story about National School Choice Week is complete if it does not mention the special interests behind the choice agenda."

NCSW’s website lists numerous partners, including the Walton Family Fund, ALEC, SPN, the Freedom Foundation, FreedomWorks, Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the James Madison Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—many of which have ties to the Koch brothers’ political network. David Koch ran for Vice President in 1980 on a platform that included privatizing public schools, and his brother Charles started pushing school choice in the 1960s. Together they have funded an array of groups that spread that agenda.

For example, both SPN and ALEC have received financial support from the Koch funding network in addition to corporations. ALEC is a pay-to-play operation whose board includesK12, a for-profit "virtual" school company that has also sponsored SPN activities. At ALEC task force meetings, corporate lobbyists and special interest groups vote as equals with legislators on bills to expand charters, vouchers, and tax credits that serve the choice agenda—in addition to other bills that attack worker rights, environmental protections, and more. Koch Industries has been on ALEC’s board for decades and the Koch family fortune is one of the biggest funders of ALEC.

As CMD has documented, the charter school industry has been fueled by more than $3.6 billion from the federal government over the past two decades in addition to billions from states and from wealthy choice advocates like the billionaire Walton and DeVos families. This surge in cash has created a league of lobbyists urging legislators to send more tax dollars to this industry.

Here are some additional resources CMD has created about the school privatization effort:

• Charter School Black Hole
• Cashing in on Kids
• SPN National Report
• ALECexposed

CMD also notes that People for the American Way (PFAW) has published a useful, detailed report: "The Agenda of National School Choice Week: Don’t Be Blinded by the Bright Yellow Scarves." Also, the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) has documented more than $200 million in fraud and waste by charter schools. Additionally, In the Public Interest (ITPI) also has resources on charter schools and school privatization, including polling. (CMD has worked with ITPI, CPD, and PFAW on issues.)

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Exploiting the 10 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina to sell charter school agitprop

Charter school boosters and their libertarian allies love nothing more than using the flood narrative of Katrina to sell a mythology of New Orleans "turned around" public education system. It generally goes like this: before Katrina was nothing but education Sodom and Gomorrah and after the hurricane struck their sins were washed away and in came the technocratic neoliberal saviors. Op-eds praising the phantom turn-around were everywhere, the most notable of which being Kristen McQueary who took to the pages of Chicago Tribune to actually wish for a "real storm" to hit Chicago so their school system could be saved like New Orleans. One op-ed, in particular, by Johnathan Alter at The Daily Beast, made one of the more remarkable admissions of anyone in the charter school movement.

One finding in particular has stuck in the public consciousness—that charter public schools (and yes, charters are public schools, despite propaganda from unions and their supporters suggesting otherwise)perform no better overall than traditional public schools. This is accurate, but not especially relevant, because many small, inexperienced groups that lack the know-how to run schools have opened charters in recent years.

Buried in Alter's 10 year Katrina celebration is a rather startling admission: charter schools aren't any better than non-charter schools. But he dismisses this rather relevant fact by saying it's because anyone off the street can open a charter school. Which,is one of the major reasons people opposed charter schools.But never mind, Alter has a corporate narrative to sew and contradictory evidence to wave away. For a complete list of neoliberals and libertarians celebrating the destruction of New Orleans check outthis recap from September. 

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http://www.alternet.org/education/web-secrecy-surrounding-federal-half-billion-handout-charter-schools

Web of Secrecy Surrounding Federal Half-a-Billion Handout to Charter Schools

More than $200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry have been documented.

By Jonas Persson / PR Watch September 8, 2015

Print

23 COMMENTS

The U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while the public is being kept in the dark about which states have applied for the lucrative grants, and what their actual track records are when it comes to preventing fraud and misuse.

Already the federal government has spent $3.3 billion in American tax dollars under the Charter Schools Program (CSP), as tallied by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

But the government has done so without requiring any accountability from the states and schools that receive the money, as CMD revealed earlier this year.

Throwing good money after bad, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for a 48 percent increase in federal charter funding earlier this year, and the House and Senate budget proposals also call for an increase-albeit a more modest one-while at the same time slashing education programs for immigrants and language learners.

The clamor for charter expansion comes despite the fact that there are federal probes underway into suspected waste and mismanagement within the program, not to mention ongoing and recently completed state audits of fraud perpetrated by charter school operators.

Earlier this year, the Center for Popular Democracy documented more than $200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry in 15 states alone, a number that is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Is now really the right time to plow more tax money into charters?

Insiders Deliberate Far from the Public Eye

The Department of Education is currently deciding what states to award $116 million this year, and more than half a billion during the five-year grant cycle.

So who is in the running and what are their track records?

Which states have applied for a grant designed to eviscerate the public school system in the name of "flexibility?" (CMD's review of state applications and reviewers' comments from the previous grant cycle exposed "flexibility" as a term of art used by the industry for state laws that allow charter schools to: operate independently from locally elected school boards, employ people to teach without adequate training or certification, and avoid collective bargaining that helps ensure that teacher-student ratios are good so that each kid gets the attention he or she deserves.)

There is no way of knowing.

The U.S Department of Education has repeatedly refused to honor a CMD request under the Freedom of Information Act for the grant applications, even though public information about which states have applied would not chill deliberation and might even help better assess which applicants should receive federal money....

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http://www.alternet.org/education/how-gop-and-education-privatizers-are-using-charters-bleed-pennsylvania-schools-dry

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http://www.prwatch.org/node/12926

jonas p

U.S. Department of Education is poised to spend half a billion dollars to help create new charter schools, while the public is being kept in the dark about which states have applied for the lucrative grants, and what their actual track records are when it comes to preventing fraud and misuse.

Already the federal government has spent $3.3 billion in American tax dollars under the Charter Schools Program (CSP), as tallied by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

But the government has done so without requiring any accountability from the states and schools that receive the money, as CMD revealed earlier this year.

Throwing good money after bad, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for a 48 percent increase in federal charter funding earlier this year, and the House and Senate budget proposals also call for an increase—albeit a more modest one—while at the same time slashing education programs for immigrants and language learners.

The clamor for charter expansion comes despite the fact that there are federal probes underway into suspected waste and mismanagement within the program, not to mention ongoing and recently completed state audits of fraud perpetrated by charter school operators.

Earlier this year, the Center for Popular Democracy documented more than $200 million in fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school industry in 15 states alone, a number that is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Is now really the right time to plow more tax money into charters?

Insiders Deliberate Far from the Public Eye

The Department of Education is currently deciding what states to award $116 million this year, and more than half a billion during the five-year grant cycle.

So who is in the running and what are their track records?

Which states have applied for a grant designed to eviscerate the public school system in the name of “flexibility?” (CMD's review of state applications and reviewers' comments from the previous grant cycle exposed “flexibility” as a term of art used by the industry for state laws that allow charter schools to: operate independently from locally elected school boards, employ people to teach without adequate training or certification, and avoid collective bargaining that helps ensure that teacher-student ratios are good so that each kid gets the attention he or she deserves.)

There is no way of knowing.

The U.S Department of Education has repeatedly refused to honor a CMD request under the Freedom of Information Act for the grant applications, even though public information about which states have applied would not chill deliberation and might even help better assess which applicants should receive federal money.

The agency has even declined to provide a list with states that have applied:

“We cannot release a list of states that have applied while it is in the midst of competition."

The upshot of this reticence is that states will land grants—possibly to the tune of a hundred million dollars or more in some cases—all at the discretion of charter school interests contracted to evaluate the applications, but without any input from ordinary citizens and advocates concerned about public schools and troubled by charter school secrecy and fraud.

But, if people in a state know that a state is applying they can weigh in so that the agency is not just hearing from an applicant who wants the money, regardless of the history of fraud and waste in that state.

Charter Millions by Hook or by Crook: The Case of Ohio

Despite ED’s unwillingness to put all the cards on the table, state reports tell us that Ohio has once again applied for a grant under the program.

The state, whose lax-to-non-existing charter school laws are an embarrassment even to the industry, has previously been awarded at least $49 million in CSP money—money that went to schools overseen by a rightwing think-tank, and, more worryingly, to schools overseen by an authorizer that had its performance rating boosted this year by top education officials who removed the failing virtual schools from the statistics so as not to stop the flow of state and federal funds.

As *The Plain Dealer* put it in an exposé: “It turns out that Ohio’s grand plan to stop the national ridicule of its charter school system is giving overseers of many of the lowest-performing schools a pass from taking heat for some of their worst problems.”

Another component of this plan, it turns out, was to apply for more federal millions to the failing schools that—by a miraculous sleight of hand—are no longer failing.

The director of Ohio’s Office of Quality School Choice, David Hansen, fell on the sword and announced his resignation in June. But Democratic lawmakers suspect that this goes higher up in the chain of command, and have called on State Superintendent Richard Ross to resign.

Did the scrubbed statistics touting the success of Ohio’s charters find its way into the state application for federal millions, signed by Superintendent Ross?

What about other states, such as Indiana, with a similar history of doctoring data to turn failing charter schools into resounding success stories?

After Abysmal Results, States Re-apply for More Money

While the known unknowns are troubling, the known knowns—to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld—are also equally disturbing.

For example, Colorado applied for grant renewal this year.

But, the last time around, in 2010, the state landed a $46 million CSP grant thanks in no small part to the lax “hiring and firing” rules and the lack of certification requirements for charter school teachers--a reviewer contracted by the U.S. Department of Education to score the application noted.

Look at California.

Through meeting minutes from the California State Board of Education we also know that the Golden State submitted an application this year. In 2010, California was awarded $254 million over five years in CSP money, but as the Inspector General discovered :{in a 2:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{012 audit:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:, the state department of education did not adequately monitor any of the schools that received sub-grants. Some schools even received federal money “without ever opening to students.” A review by CMD revealed that a staggering 9 out of the 41 schools that shuttered in the 2014-'15 school year were created by federal money under CSP.

How about Wisconsin?

Wisconsin received $69.6 million between 2010 and 2015, but out of the charter schools awarded sub-grants during the first two years of the cycle, one-fifth (16 out of 85) have closed since, as CMD discovered.

Then there’s Indiana.

Indiana was awarded $31.3 million over the same period, partly because of the fact that charter schools in the state are exempt from democratic oversight by elected school boards. “[C]harter schools are accountable solely to authorizers under Indiana law,” one reviewer enthused, awarding the application 30/30 under the rubric “flexibility offered by state law.”

This “flexibility” has been a recipe for disaster in the Hoosier state with countless examples of schools pocketing the grant money and then converting to private schools, as CMD discovered by taking a closer look at grantees under the previous cycle:

• The Indiana Cyber Charter School opened in 2012 with $420,000 in seed money from the federal program. Dogged by financial scandals and plummeting student results the charter was revoked in 2015 and the school last month leaving 1,100 students in the lurch.
• Padua Academy lost its charter in 2014 and converted to a private religious school, but not before receiving $702,000 in federal seed money.

Have They Learned Anything?

Secretary Duncan has previously called for “absolute transparency” when it comes to school performance, but that’s just a talking point unless he releases the applications, or even a list of the states that are in the running, before they are given the final stamp of approval.

As it stands, there is no way of knowing if the state departments of education seeking millions in tax dollars:

• Have supplied actual performance data that reflect the reality for students enrolled in charter schools rather than “scrubbed” or doctored numbers;
• Try to outbid each other in “flexibility” by explaining, say, how charter schools in X can hire teachers without a license and fire them without cause. In its 2010 application, the Colorado Department of Education, for example, boasted of how charter school teachers are “employed at will by the school”;
• Have corrective action plans so as to avoid repeating the costly waste and mistakes from the previous grant cycle (such as schools created by federal seed money closing within a few years or never even opening).

Because the federal charter schools program is designed to foster charter school growth, which in turn means that money will be diverted from traditional public schools to an industry that resists government enforcement of basic standards for financial controls, accountability, and democratic oversight, the public has a big stake in this and a right to know more, before their money disappears down black holes.

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12926#sthash.iZCUvgd9.dpuf

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http://www.propublica.org/series/evaluating-charter-schools

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715 ALEC

School vouchers were never about helping poor, at-risk or minority students. But selling them as social mobility tickets was a useful fiction that for some twenty-five years helped rightwing ideologues and corporate backers gain bipartisan support for an ideological scheme designed to privatize public schools.

But the times they are a-changin'. Wisconsin is well on its way [3] toward limitless voucher schools, and last month, Nevada signed into law [4] a universal "education savings account" allowing parents to send their kids to private or religious schools, or even to home-school them—all on the taxpayers' dime. On the federal level, a proposed amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that would have created a multi-billion-dollar-a-year voucher program was only narrowly defeated [5] in the U.S. Senate.

The American Federation for Children (AFC), chaired by Amway billionaireBetsy DeVos, estimates that vouchers and voucher-like tax-credit schemes currently divert $1.5 billion [6] of public money to private schools annually. But that is not enough. By expanding "pro-school choice legislative majorities" in state houses across the country the organization hopes that $5 billion a yearwill be siphoned out of public schools by 2020 and applied to for-profit and religious schools.

With vouchers gaining momentum nationwide, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC [7]), which is meeting in San Diego this week, has decided to drop the pretense that vouchers have anything to do with social and racial equity, and is now pushing vouchers for the middle class—a project which, if pursued enough in numbers, will progressively erode the public school system and increase the segregation of students based on race and economic standing.

ALEC Comes Clean, Vouchers Are for the Middle Class

The agenda [8] for this week's ALEC meeting includes a presentation entitled: “Problems in Suburbia: Why Middle-Class Students Need School Choice, Digital Learning and Better Options.”

Perhaps more importantly, ALEC's revisions to three of its "model" voucher bills make clear that it is changing focus from underserved inner-city schools to middle-class suburbia. The talking points at the end of the bills state:

• "Legislators … should keep in mind the financial burden many middle-class families face in paying for private schools."
• “The authors believe that all children from low- and middle-income families should receive public support for their education regardless of whether they are attending a public or private school."
• “The authors do not adjust the amount granted to an ESA [Education Savings Account] student based upon the student's income because states do not adjust the public investment for a student attending a traditional public school or a charter based upon their household income.”

As if to further nail down the point that school vouchers are not about equity, ALEC also advises legislators against including language “banning discrimination in hiring.” But if they choose to do so, they should “take care not to interfere with the ability of religious institutions to hire individuals who share their religious beliefs.”

"Abolishing the Public School System"

ALEC is not the only organization coming clean on vouchers.

At the American Federation for Children’s [9] National Policy Summit held in New Orleans,lobbyist Scott Jensen—who, before being banned from Wisconsin politics for violating the public trust [10] served as chief of staff to governor Tommy Thompson, and was a prime mover behind the first voucher program in the nation—admitted that vouchers were really all about “pursuing Milton Friedman’s free-market vision” even though the ideological agenda was nowadays sugarcoated with “a much more compelling message ... of social justice.”

So what exactly was the brave new world Milton Friedman envisioned when he first floated the idea of school vouchers? While lecturing rightwing state lawmakers at a 2006 ALEC meeting [11], Friedman jumped at the opportunity to explain what his vision was all about. It had nothing whatsoever to do with helping “indigent” children; no, he explained to thunderous applause, vouchers were all about “abolishing the public school system.”

Here is an excerpt fromFriedman’s ALEC speech:

If I were to ask everyone here, what would be your idea of the right way to conduct, to have an educational system constructed, you would say the ideal would be to have parents control and pay for their school's education, just as they pay for their food, their clothing and their housing. That, of course, would leave some indigent and problems of charity. Those should be handled as charity problems, not educational problems. The reason we cannot do that is because taxes are used to pay not for education, but for schools, for teachers.

How do we get from where we are to where we want to be—to a system in which parents control the education of their children? Of course, the ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it. Then parents would have enough money to pay for private schools, but you're not gonna to do that. So you have to ask, what are politically feasible ways of solving the problem. The answer, in my opinion, is choice, that you have to change the way government money is directed. Instead of it being used to finance schools and buildings, you should decide how much money you are willing to spend on each child and give that money, provide that money in the form of a voucher to the parents of the children so the parents can choose a school that they regard as best for their child.

Ditching the Marketing Plan

By shifting the focus from poor, minority children to the predominantly white middle class, ALEC has come full circle. Vouchers were first proposed in the 1950s [12] as a way for white families to get around the desegregation resulting from the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision. ALEC first pitched vouchers to legislators in 1984 as a way to “introduce normal market forces" into education and to "dismantle the control and power of" teachers' unions. While there was a narrative of parent "empowerment" at that time, there was not even a passing mention of children—let alone minority children.

But when William Bennett joined Ronald Reagan's cabinet in 1985, vouchers soon gained a unique selling point. In the words of The Black Commentator [13]:

“Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett understood what was missing from the voucher political chemistry: minorities. If visible elements of the Black and Latino community could be ensnared in what was then a lily-white scheme, then the Right’s dream of a universal vouchers system to subsidize general privatization of education, might become a practical political project. More urgently, Bennett and other rightwing strategists saw that vouchers had the potential to drive a wedge between Blacks and teachers unions, cracking the Democratic Party coalition. In 1988, Bennett urged the Catholic Church to “seek out the poor, the disadvantaged…and take them in, educate them, and then ask society for fair recompense for your efforts”–vouchers. The game was on.”

Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups across the nation soon launched massive whitewashing campaigns; they started churning out policy reports and books purporting to show how school vouchers would actually benefit minority students. Examples include: We Can Rescue Our Children: The Cure for Chicago's Public School Crisis (Heartland Institute, 1988) and Liberating Schools: Education in the Inner City (Cato Institute, 1990).

By proposing schemes with vouchers weighted to boost racial diversity, or restricted to children from low-income families, the organizations pushing vouchers were able to kill two birds with one stone. They made them acceptable by obscuring the segregationist history [14], and, crucially, they could now :{cast themselves as the "new" civil rights movement. RENTATOM

}: 

In state after state, politicians were in on the trick. They would sign limited voucher programs into law as “civil rights” measures only to gradually expand the programs to higher-income white families. The Milwaukee program—the first in the country—was originally restricted to families learning less than 175 percent of the federal poverty level. But under Gov. Scott Walker, the income ceiling was recently upped to 300 percent. A married couple with two children can currently earn [15] $78,647, which is far more than the median U.S. family income of $52,250 [16], and still send them off to private schools at the public’s expense. Most students receiving vouchers last year were already attending private schools [17]--meaning vouchers were being used a taxpayer subsidy for private education rather than as a way for students to escape underperforming public schools. Walker's newest voucher expansion in the state budget could suck some $600-800 million [18] out of public schools over 10 years.

“They have high-jacked the program,” Annette “Polly” Williams, an African-American lawmaker who co-sponsored the original bill, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [19].

This is a pattern across the country. The voucher-like corporate tax credit program in Georgia was originally billed as a way of helping African-American and Latino families, but most scholarships have been awarded “white students from upper income families,” the Southern Education Foundation wrote in a scathing report [20]. In 2013, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana raised the income requirements of the voucher program in the Hoosier State, and last year, Florida's Republican governor Rick Scott lifted the income bar for the state voucher program [21], allowing a family of four making up to $62,010 a year to participate—$20,000 higher than the previous ceiling.

With upped income ceilings in multiple states—not to mention the universal "Education Savings Account" system signed into law in Nevada last month—ALEC seems poised to ditch the civil rights "marketing plan [22]," (as the rightwing Heartland Institute aptly put it in a 1991 paper) and get back to basics: school vouchers are for privatizing public education.

ALEC makes this abundantly clear when it recommends in its talking points that legislators not adjust the amount granted based on family income. The upshot of this is that vouchers will be a welcome bonus for well-off families whereas poor families may not be able to afford private school tuition even with the extra money.

This, in turn, will lead to increased segregation "based on race, socio-economic status, disability, English language proficience," as public school watchdog Educate Nevada Now [23] warned when Gov. Sandoval signed the universal ESAs into law in June—a prospect that does not seem to faze ALEC legislators who are set to renew and refresh these policies in San Diego today.

Jonas Perrson is the Center for Media and Democracy's writer focused on education policy.

http://www.alternet.org/print/education/right-wing-alec-now-says-school-vouchers-are-kids-suburbia-not-poor

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http://news.muckety.com/2011/10/06/charting-the-charter-schools-funding-network/34471?rLink

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http://news.muckety.com/2014/04/07/charter-schools-the-walton-familys-favorite-cause/46471

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http://www.muckety.com/04AAEE5A60180D840301B368855DE57A.map

• Wall Street ♥ charter schools - May 5, 2013
• Charting the charter schools funding network - October 6, 2011
• Mapping billionaires and charter schools-May 7, 2013 http://news.muckety.com/2013/05/07/mapping-billionaires-and-charter-schools/42621?rLink
• Arvest - the Walton family bank - September 8, 2013
• Hedge funders and charter schools - May 22, 2014
• Focus is on NYC charter schools - October 27, 2007
• Celebrities and charter schools - May 23, 2014
• Wal-Mart’s ties to the Environmental Defense Fund - November 8, 2013
• America’s rich get richer - September 23, 2010
• Funders of media organizations - April 8, 2014

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http://www.alternet.org/magical-mystery-tour-american-austerity-how-one-state-destroying-democracy-and-poisoning-its-people

Something is rotten in the state of Michigan.

One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter schoolsystem, only to witness the for-profit management company it hiredflee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit.Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan’s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder’s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself -- all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

If you’re thinking, "Who cares?" since what happens in Michigan stays in Michigan, think again. The state’s aggressive balance-the-books style of governance has already spread beyond its borders. In January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed bankruptcy lawyer and former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to be a “legal adviser” to Atlantic City. The Detroit Free Press described the move as “a state takeover similar to Gov. Rick Snyder's state intervention in the Motor City.”

And this spring, amid the hullabaloo of Republicans entering the 2016 presidential race, Governor Snyder launched his own national tour to sell “the Michigan story to the rest of the country.” His trip was funded by a nonprofit (fed, naturally, by undisclosed donations) named “Making Government Accountable: The Michigan Story.” 

To many Michiganders, this sounded as ridiculous as Jeb Bush launching a super PAC dubbed "Making Iraq Free: The Bush Family Story.”  Except Snyder wasn’t planning to enter the presidential rat race. Instead, he was attempting to mainstream Michigan’s form of austerity politics and its signature emergency management legislation, which stripped more than halfof the state’s African American residents of their local voting rights in 2013 and 2014.

As the governor jaunted around the country, Ann Arbor-based photographer Eduardo García and I decided to set out on what we thought of as our own two-week Magical Michigan Tour. And while we weren’t driving a specially outfitted psychedelic tour bus -- we spent most of the trip in my grandmother’s 2005 Prius -- our journey was nevertheless remarkably surreal. From the southwest banks of Lake Michigan to the eastern tips of the peninsula, we crisscrossed the state visiting more than half a dozen cities to see if there was another side to the governor’s story and whether Michigan really was, as one Detroit resident put it, “a massive experiment in unraveling U.S. democracy.”

Stop One: Water Wars in Flint

Just as we arrive, the march spills off the sidewalk in front of the city council building.

“Stop poisoning our children!” chants a little girl as the crowd tumbles down South Saginaw Street, the city’s main drag.  We’re in Flint, Michigan, a place that hit the headlines last year for its brown, chemical-laced, possibly toxic water.  A wispy white-haired woman waves a gallon jug filled with pee-colored liquid from her home tap. “They don’t care that they’re killing us!” she cries.

We catch up with Claire McClinton, the formidable if grandmotherly organizer of the Flint Democracy Defense League, as we approach the roiling Flint River.  It’s been a longtime dumping ground for the Ford Motor Company’s riverfront factories and, as of one year ago today, the only source of the city’s drinking water.  On April 25, 2014, on the instruction of the city’s emergency manager, Flint stopped buying its supplies from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and started drawing water directly from the river, which meant a budgetary savings of $12 million a year. The downside: people started getting sick.

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http://www.alternet.org/education/wisconsin-republican-compromise-ups-state-ed-budget-then-steals-money-vouchers

Wisconsin, led by extreme-right Governor Scott Walker, demonstrates how one party state government can execute a compromise.  In February, Walker proposed cutting $127 million out of the budget for K-12 public education.  Last week the Republican dominated state legislature put back a good part of that money.  Then the legislature re-directed much of it away from public education to private and parochial schools.

Here is how Jessie Opoien of the *Capital Times*describes what happened: “The co-chairs of the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee said on Tuesday its Republican members have reached an agreement to provide an additional $200 million for K-12 education than what Gov. Scott Walker proposed in his two-year budget.  The funds will restore a $127 million cut next year that was proposed in Walker’s budget, and will provide an additional $100 per pupil in state aid the following year.”

Except here’s the catch, according to *Wisconsin Public Radio*: “Republicans on the Legislature’s budget-writing committee filled Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed cut to public schools… but they also changed the way the state pays for school vouchers.  From now on, public and private voucher schools will both be competing for the same pot of money.  In the first year of the budget, that means voucher schools will get $18 million more while public schools get $18 million less.”

AnAssociated Press reportexplains the details.  The plan would lift a 1,000 student cap statewide on the number of vouchers and let any public school student apply.  Students in grades K-8 would receive $7,210 from their local school district to attend a voucher school.  School districts would have to provide $7,856 for any high school student.  In the 2014-2015 school year more than 3,500 students applied for a voucher, indicating that the new legislation would rapidly expand school choice beyond the current 1,000 student cap.  Like other states with voucher programs, Wisconsin does not require a student to have been enrolled in a public school  before applying for a voucher.  This means that students already enrolled in private and parochial schools could qualify for public funds to underwrite their private school education....

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http://www.prwatch.org/node/12830

“The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month.

Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls.

CMD’s review of appropriations reveals that the federal government has spent a staggering sum, $3.3 billion, of taxpayer money creating and expanding the charter school industry over the past two decades, but it has done so without requiring the most basic transparency in who ultimately receives the funds and what those tax dollars are being used for, especially in contrast to the public information about truly public schools.

Even more tellingly, other documents reveal that ED has knowingly awarded charter grant to states with no statutory oversight of charter authorizers and schools as the grant applications are evaluated based on how much "flexibility" from state laws charter schools enjoy.

This lack of oversight, which is a design feature rather than a bug, is a recipe for disaster for far too many American school children, and for taxpayers, when large chunks of the money end up either missing in action or in the corporate coffers of charter school "management organizations" exempt from democratic control.

Federal charter school funding has expanded 60-fold since its inception in 1995, and—despite statements by ED and others of regret regarding enormous amounts squandered by incompetent or greedy charter school operators—very little has been done by the government to require strong financial controls to protect the educational opportunities of kids attending charters and to protect our tax dollars from rip-offs and waste.

1. New Finding: The U.S. Government Has Spent $3.3 Billion on Charters Since 1995

- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/node/12830#sthash.Hb4dfO7J.dpuf

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When a Wildlife Rehab Center Regulates Charter Schools: Inside the Wild World of Charter Regulation

Charter school “authorizers” are charged with making sure schools can be trusted with kids and with public money. Problem is,

many lack the tools to do the job.

by Marian Wang

ProPublica, Feb. 20, 2015, 11:14 a.m.

http://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-wild-world-of-charter-regulation

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http://www.alternet.org/education/racist-history-charter-school-movement

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 top official in the New York State Comptroller's Office has urged regulators to require more transparency on charter-school finances. The response has been, well, nonexistent.

More coverage: When Charter Schools Are Nonprofit in Name Only

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http://www.alternet.org/print/education/charter-schools-accused-segregating-americas-education-system

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Salon [1] / By Marian Wang [2]

When Charter Schools Are Nonprofit in Name Only

December 11, 2014 |

This originally appeared on ProPublica [3].

A couple of years ago, auditors looked at the books of a charter school in Buffalo, New York, and were taken aback by what they found. Like all charter schools, Buffalo United Charter School is funded with taxpayer dollars. The school is also a nonprofit. But as the New York State auditors wrote, Buffalo United was sending “ virtually all of the School’s revenues [4]” directly to a for-profit company hired to handle its day-to-day operations.

Charter schools often hire companies to handle their accounting and management functions. Sometimes the companies even take the lead in hiring teachers, finding a school building, and handling school finances.

In the case of Buffalo United, the auditors found that the school board had little idea about exactly how the company – a large management firm called National Heritage Academies – was spending the school’s money. The school’s board still had to approve overall budgets, but it appeared to accept the company’s numbers with few questions. The signoff was “essentially meaningless,” the auditors wrote.

In the charter-school sector, this arrangement is known as a “sweeps” contract because nearly all of a school’s public dollars – anywhere from 95 to 100 percent – is “swept” into a charter-management company.

The contracts are an example of how the charter schools sometimes cede control of public dollars to private companies that have no legal obligation to act in the best interests of the schools or taxpayers. When the agreement is with a for-profit firm like National Heritage Academies, it’s also a chance for such firms to turn taxpayer money into tidy profits.

“It’s really just a pass-through for for-profit entities,” said Eric Hall, an attorney in Colorado Springs who specializes in work with charter schools and has come across many sweeps contracts. “In what sense is that a nonprofit endeavor? It’s not.”

Neither National Heritage Academies nor the Buffalo United board responded to requests for comment. (Update: NHA spokeswoman Jennifer Hoff said in an emailed statement, “Our approach relieves our partner boards of all financial, operational, and academic risks – a significant burden that ultimately defeats many charter schools. Freed from burdens like fundraising, our partner boards can focus on governance and oversight … NHA and its partner schools comply fully with state and federal laws, authorizer oversight requirements, and education department regulations – including everything related to transparency.”)

While relationships between charter schools and management companies have started [5] to come [6] under scrutiny [7], sweeps contracts have received little attention. Schools have agreed to such setups with both nonprofit and for-profit management companies, but it’s not clear how often. Nobody appears to be keeping track.

What is clear is that it can be hard for regulators and even schools themselves to follow the money when nearly all of it goes into the accounts of a private company.

“We’re not confident that sweeps contracts allow [charters schools and regulators] to fully fulfill their public functions,” said Alex Medler, who leads policy and advocacy work at the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a trade group for charter regulators. The organization discourages [8] the arrangements. “We think this is an issue that needs attention.”

Officials have gotten glimpses of questionable spending by some firms using “sweeps” contracts.

Take the case of Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School, another National Heritage Academies school. In 2012, state auditors tried to track the $10 million in public funding given to the school, only to conclude they were “ unable to determine [9] … the extent to which the $10 million of annual public funding provided to the school was actually used to benefit its students.” From what auditors could tell, the school was paying above-market rent for its building, which in turn is owned by a subsidiary of National Heritage Academies. They also had concerns about equipment charges.

The auditors couldn’t ultimately tell whether the charges were reasonable because National Heritage Academies refused to share the relevant financial details. The firm also refused to provide detailed documentation for $1.6 million in costs recorded as corporate services, claiming the information was proprietary, according to the audit. The board president of Brooklyn Excelsior did not respond to our request for comment.

While the auditors in New York were disturbed by what they found, they could do little more than issue reports with advisory recommendations. “We can’t audit the management company,” said Brian Butry, a spokesman for New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

In Michigan, where NHA is the largest charter-school operator, state education regulators have voiced similar frustrations about the degree to which these private firms are shielded from having to answer to the public about how money is spent.

“I can’t FOIA National Heritage Academies,” said Casandra Ulbrich, Vice President of the Michigan State Board of Education, referring to the right to request public documents from public agencies. “I don’t know who they’re subcontracting with, I don’t know if they’re bid out. I don’t know if there are any conflicts of interest. This is information we as taxpayers don’t have a right to.”

Last year, Ulbrich and the State Board of Education had called for more transparency to be brought to the financial dealings of charter-management firms. They specifically asked the legislature to outlaw sweeps contracts [10]. “Unfortunately,” Ulbrich said, “it fell on deaf ears.”

The Internal Revenue Service has questioned some cases of sweeps contracts, but has not taken a consistent stand on whether the contracts are appropriate.

It’s not just charter regulators and auditors that have reason to be wary of such setups. Some charter-school boards that signed sweeps contracts have found themselves shut out of the operations of their own schools.

In Ohio, ten charter-school boards sued their management firm, White Hat Management, in 2010 after they couldn’t get answers to basic questions about why their schools’ performance lagged and how the school’s money was spent.

Even so, it was a challenge for the schools to take back control. After handing over the bulk of their money to White Hat for years, the schools had little money of their own, said Karen Hockstad, an attorney who’s been representing the school boards in continuing litigation.

“Their hands are tied. They don’t have the money to build brand new infrastructure and get new desks and books and anything else,” said Hockstad. White Hat Management did not return a request for comment.

Some charter-school regulators – recognizing their limited authority over charter-management companies – are beginning to push back, requiring schools to get more information from management firms. Still, that hasn’t stopped some management companies from putting up a fight [11].

Regulators in the District of Columbia are seeking more legal authority over management firms after two recent scandals [12]. The DC Public Charter School Board has asked the city council to pass legislation that would allow access to the books of management companies under certain conditions. So far, that effort has gone nowhere.

http://www.alternet.org/print/education/when-charter-schools-are-nonprofit-name-only

http://www.southernstudies.org/2014/10/charter-school-power-broker-turns-public-education.html

NC Koch

 late February, the North Carolina chapter of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation -- a group co-founded by the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers -- embarked on what itbilled as a statewide tour of charter schools, a cornerstone of the group's education agenda. The first -- and it turns out, only -- stop was Douglass Academy, a new charter school in downtown Wilmington.

Douglass Academy was an unusual choice. A few weeks before, the school had been warned by the state about low enrollment. It had just 35 students, roughly half the state's minimum. And a month earlier, a local newspaper had reportedthat federal regulators were investigating the school's operations.

But the school has other attributes that may have appealed to the Koch group. The school's founder, a politically active North Carolina businessman named Baker Mitchell, shares the Kochs' free-market ideals.  His model for success embraces decreased government regulation, increased privatization and, if all goes well, healthy corporate profits.

In that regard, Mitchell, 74, appears to be thriving. Every year, millions of public education dollars flow through Mitchell's chain of four nonprofit charter schools to for-profit companies he controls.

The schools buy or lease nearly everything from companies owned by Mitchell. Their desks. Their computers. The training they provide to teachers. Most of the land and buildings. Unlike with traditional school districts, at Mitchell's charter schools there's no competitive bidding. No evidence of haggling over rent or contracts.

The schools have all hired the same for-profit management company to run their day-to-day operations. The company, Roger Bacon Academy, is owned by Mitchell. It functions as the schools' administrative arm, taking the lead in hiring and firing school staff. It handles most of the bookkeeping. The treasurer of the nonprofit that controls the four schools is also the chief financial officer of Mitchell's management company. The two organizations even share a bank account.

Mitchell's management company was chosen by the schools' nonprofit board, which Mitchell was on at the time -- an arrangement that is illegal in many other states.

Charters are privately run but government-funded schools that are supposed to be open to all. Policymakers and many parents have embraced charters as an alternative to poorly performing and underfunded traditional public schools. As charters have grown in popularity, an industry of management companies like Mitchell's has sprung up to assist them.

Many of these companies are becoming political players in their states, working to shape the still-emerging set of rules charters must play by. A few, including Mitchell's company, have aligned themselves with influential conservative groups, such as Americans for Prosperity and the Koch-supported American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

This new reality -- in which businesses can run chains of public schools -- has spurred questions about the role of profit in public education and whether more safeguards are needed to prevent corruption. The U.S. Department of Education has declared the relationships between charter schools and their management companies, both for-profit and nonprofit, a "current and emerging risk" for misuse of federal dollars. It is conducting a wide-ranging look at such relationships. In the last year alone, the FBI sent out subpoenas as part of an investigation into a Connecticut-based charter-management company and raided schools that are part of a New Mexico chain and a large network of charter schools spanning Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

Two of Mitchell's former employees told ProPublica they have been interviewed by federal investigators. Mitchell says he does not know if his schools are part of any inquiry and has not been contacted by any investigators.

To Mitchell, his schools are simply an example of the triumph of the free market. "People here think it's unholy if you make a profit" from schools, he said in July, while attending a country-club luncheon to celebrate the legacy of free-market sage Milton Friedman.

It's impossible to know how much Mitchell  is taking home in profits from his companies. He's fought to keep most of the financial details secret. Still, audited financial statements show that over six years, companies owned by Mitchell took in close to $20 million in revenue from his first two schools. Those records go through the middle of 2013. Mitchell has since opened two more schools.

Many in the charter-school industry say that charter schools are more accountable than traditional public schools because, as Mitchell is fond of saying, "parents can shut us down overnight. They stop bringing their kids here? We don't get any money."

Moreover, Mitchell said, students at his two more established schools have produced higher test scores at lower costs than those in traditional public schools: "Maybe Baker Mitchell gets a huge profit. Maybe he doesn't get any profit. Who cares?"

But many charter supporters question that perspective. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a group that promotes best practices for overseeing charter schools, says schools should be independent from their contractors. Mitchell's dual roles as both a charter-school board member and a vendor, for instance, were a blatant violation of those standards.

"This kind of conflict of interest is what I would consider shocking," said Parker Baxter, a program director for the group.

"This isn't as if one of the board members happens to own a chalk company where they buy chalk from, and he recused himself from buying chalk," he said. "This is the entire management and operation of the school."

Mitchell was pushed by North Carolina regulators to step down from his schools' board last fall, a move he derides as unnecessary. "It's so silly," he told ProPublica. "Undue influence, blah blah blah."

But concerns about his influence continued even after he stepped down. One board member resigned in frustration over the role of Mitchell's company. Two others also quit around the same time. Mitchell still serves as secretary for the board, taking notes and doing the meeting minutes. Asked about frustrations among board members over his involvement, Mitchell said, "Everybody's free to their own opinion."

* * *

When charter schools were first established in the early 1990s, supporters sought flexibility and freedom from the bureaucratic rules they believed hamstrung traditional schools. Charter schools have leeway over their calendar, curriculum, and who they hire and fire. In most states, they do not have to follow many of the processes meant to prevent corruption and misspending of public dollars, such as putting contracts out for competitive bidding.

Mitchell moved to North Carolina in 1997, a year after the state passed a law allowing charter schools. He said he dreamed of starting a school after selling his computer business in Houston in 1989. He had planned on a private school, but when he moved to North Carolina and read about charters, he said he figured that was his chance. He applied to open his first school in 1999, laying out his plans to teach what his company website describes as a "classical curriculum espousing the values of traditional western civilization." He opened Charter Day School the following year.

Settled into the southeastern part of the state, Mitchell quickly connected with the state's big political players, including conservative kingmaker Art Pope. By 2002, he was sitting alongside Pope on the board of the John Locke Foundation. The foundation is part of the State Policy Network, a Koch-supported group of think tanks whose agenda includes steering public funds away from traditional schools and toward charters, vouchers and tax credits for homeschoolers.

From the beginning, concerns about excessive profits and Mitchell's conflicts of interest dogged the new school. In 2001, the Internal Revenue Service rejected the group's application for tax-exempt status, noting Mitchell's dual roles as both a board member and head of a company doing business with the board. The IRS also noted the bank account shared by the schools' nonprofit and Mitchell's for-profit company, and that the school was leasing space from another company owned by Mitchell.

"Mr. Mitchell thus controls both your management company and your lessor," the IRS wrote in adenial letter. "He has dual loyalties to you and his private, for-profit companies. This is a clear conflict of interest for him."

The school's board -- with Mitchell as a member -- protested. It went back and forth with the IRS and eventually made some concessions. For example, it set a limit on the management company's fees and required board members to recuse themselves from votes in which they had financial interests. It also sent along a letter from an independent real-estate professional who evaluated the school's lease and offered assurances that it was at market rate. (The real-estate professional, as it happens, worked at the same firm as the board chair's husband.)

Many of the things flagged by the IRS were left unchanged. Mitchell and an employee of his remained on the board. The joint bank account and the leasing arrangement also stayed the same. But having reached something of a compromise, the IRS approved the school as a tax-exempt nonprofit in March 2002.

Mitchell's second school, Columbus Charter School, opened in 2007, in rural Columbus County. That school and Mitchell's first, Charter Day School, have won recognition several years in a row for their performance on state tests.

But comparing the performance of these two schools to their traditional-school counterparts is complicated by the fact that they have comparatively low percentages of needy students, who tend to score lower on standardized tests. For instance, 37 percent of test-takers at Columbus Charter School earlier this year were "economically disadvantaged," compared to the county's 74 percent. The two schools do not provide busing or participate in the federal free and reduced-price lunch program -- services that are considered key to ensuring broad access.

Mitchell says his third school, Douglass Academy -- whose diversity was celebrated by a visit from the Koch group -- is the only one that provides transportation and food for students. Itstarget population is children in several Wilmington housing projects. Students at the school, which opened in 2013, haven't yet taken state tests so there's no data to show how they're faring.    

Mitchell's schools are also distinguished from public schools by their different tone. Staff and students pledge to avoid errors that arise from "the comfort of popular opinion and custom," "compromise" and "over-reliance on rational argument." Students must vow "to be obedient and loyal to those in authority, in my family, in my school, and in my community and country, So long as I shall live."

The schools also use a rigid instructional approach in which teachers stick to a script and drill students repeatedly through call and response. Latin is taught as early as elementary school.

Mitchell's company has managed the schools' staffs with similar rigor. A strong sense of hierarchy took root as the schools expanded. When a new corporate office was built to house the management company, teachers jokingly began calling it the "White House."

From the "White House," Mitchell and other top administrators could watch teachers in their classrooms via surveillance cameras installed in every classroom, in every school. During a tour of school grounds with this reporter, Mitchell and the school's IT director discussed surveillance software called iSpy. "We need to call it something else," Mitchell offered with a chuckle. "Call it iHelp or something." Mitchell said the cameras give administrators the ability to observe teachers in action and offer them tips and coaching.

* * *

As Mitchell was looking to expand his enterprise in the mid-2000s, he ran into a roadblock. North Carolina, like many states, had been cautious when it first allowed charter schools and had placed a cap on their growth.

By the time Mitchell applied in 2007 to open a charter school in Duplin County, the state was nearing that cap -- and his plans fell through when the State Board of Education, deciding among three charter applicants, chose the other two schools to fill the spots remaining that year.

Mitchell wanted to get rid of the cap. Restrictions were being lifted or eliminated in many states, thanks to lobbying from the charter sector and to federal incentives set up by the Obama administration, which awarded states money based in part on their openness to charter schools. Mitchell and others favoring charters pushed for North Carolina lawmakers to follow suit.

In 2011, they got what he wanted.

Republicans took control of the state legislature and swiftly eliminated the cap on charter schools. Mitchell was also given a coveted position on the state's new Charter School Advisory Council, an influential committee tasked with reviewing charter applications and making recommendations to the State Board of Education.

It was a turning point for Mitchell. Over the next two years, he got the go-ahead to open two more schools. With both, he appeared to benefit from unusual exceptions or political intervention.

One of them was Douglass Academy, Mitchell's school for needier students in downtown Wilmington. Under state law, charter schools must have at least 65 students enrolled, but Douglass Academy was well below that. Mitchell's colleagues on the advisory council gave him a temporary waiver that allowed the school to avoid closure while it tried to boost enrollment.

"I would say it was unusual," Joel Medley, head of the state's Office of Charter Schools, said of the temporary waiver. According to Medley, the only other charter schools in the state that received such waivers got them on a permanent basis because of geographic isolation or because they had set out to serve special student populations deemed ill-suited to large-school settings. Neither condition was true of Douglass Academy, whose leadership blamed the enrollment troubles on difficulties securing a facility. The school has since cleared the state's minimum, though enrollment is still far below the school's own projections.

Mitchell's fourth school, South Brunswick Charter School, also lucked out. In 2013, the school's application failed an initial screening and was put in a stack of applications excluded from further consideration. But then the president of the state Senate, Sen. Phil Berger -- the same Republican lawmaker who appointed Mitchell to the Charter School Advisory Council -- intervened on behalf of frustrated applicants. The whole stack was re-evaluated -- a "one-time decision," said a memo from the advisory council, due to "extraneous circumstances." Berger did not respond to a request for comment.

Even upon re-evaluation, a subcommittee of the council voiced unease about aspects of South Brunswick's application, including "concern that two of seven board members are active employees" of its management company.

But Mitchell's fourth school was nevertheless approved, with the stipulation that members of the management company, including Mitchell, step down from the board. South Brunswick Charter School opened its doors this summer at a temporary site. A permanent spot is in the works -- on land purchased by another one of Mitchell's for-profit companies with plans to lease it back to the school.

* * *

Mitchell's influence has also reverberated beyond his four schools.  

In 2013, the state legislature passed a sweeping charter school bill pushed by Mitchell that loosened oversight and regulation. The law relaxed requirements on how many of each charter school's teachers had to be certified, giving schools more flexibility and potential savings on labor costs. It also included a perk -- a tax exemption -- for landlords who, like Mitchell, rent property to charter schools.

Parts of the bill echo legislation pushed forward in other states. ALEC, for example, has promoted legislation across the country to make it easier for non-teachers to start teaching, sidestepping what it sees as cumbersome licensing requirements. Parts of the North Carolina bill have the same wording as ALEC model legislation.

Mitchell was intimately involved in seeing the bill through as chair of a pro-charter lobbying group, the NC Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Asked about the tax break and whether he had pushed for provisions that would directly benefit him, Mitchell told ProPublica, "There was another group that pushed that through. I didn't have anything to do with it."

But a lobbyist for Mitchell's group, Debbie Clary, said, "It was our bill. I was the only lobbyist working on it." Clary added: "The person most engaged was Baker [Mitchell]."

Mitchell's group also posted a note on Facebook after the bill was signed, calling the new law the culmination of two years of work by the Alliance. "The Alliance was able to gain an exemption from county or city property tax, no matter who owns the property, if it is used exclusively for a Charter School," the note read.

Mitchell has close ties with Sen. Jerry Tillman, the lawmaker who sponsored the bill. "We're good friends," Mitchell said. "We talk." Records show that Mitchell wrote Tillman's campaign a $4,000 check a month after the bill was signed -- the maximum that state law at the time allowed an individual to give directly to a candidate each year. Tillman did not respond to requests for comment.

Mitchell and the Alliance didn't get everything they wanted.

Over the years Mitchell had pressed lawmakers to move charter schools largely out from under the authority of the State Board of Education. Mitchell said he views the state board as a force restricting the free market through overregulation and protecting "the monopoly of the government-run schools."

Parents at Mitchell's schools were urged to press their elected officials to remove charter schools from the purview of the State Board of Education: "Your legislators need to hear from you and know of your support for an independent Office of Charter Schools," said a school newsletter. "Let them know you do not want the State Board of Education controlling charter schools."

The 2013 bill introduced by Tillman spelled out much of what Mitchell wanted. It proposed the formation of a Charter School Advisory Board that would make all the major decisions about approving new schools and renewing or revoking existing charters without having to answer to the State Board of Education.

But the state's other main pro-charter group deemed the proposal too extreme and came out strongly against it. An amended bill eventually passed that created a new board without all the power Mitchell and the Alliance had sought. And while Mitchell was appointed to the board, he resigned earlier this year while under pressure over conflicts of interest. He told ProPublica he stepped down because it became a lot of work.

Mitchell has also expressed frustration with a state law passed this summer that requires charter schools to comply with public records laws. Still, the new law does not apply to charter management companies such as Mitchell's.

The board of Mitchell's charter schools has repeatedly tangled with local news outlets that have made public records requests seeking salaries and other financial details from the schools. Last month the StarNews of Wilmington filed a lawsuit against the schools' nonprofit board, alleging that it has violated the state public records law. (The board chair for Charter Day School, Inc., John Ferrante, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Mitchell himself has taken a hard line against disclosures of financial information concerning his for-profit companies. For private corporations, he wrote on his blog in July, "the need for transparency is superfluous" and is simply a mechanism for the media to "intrude and spin their agenda."

* * *

In North Carolina and many other states, the battle over charters is no longer about whether to have them. Instead, it's largely between those who believe in regulating them and creating mechanisms for public accountability and those, like Mitchell, who believe that's the job of the free market.

"That's the fight in North Carolina," said Damon Circosta, executive director of the A.J. Fletcher Foundation, which sees charter schools as a way to improve public education. "That free-market ideology has taken hold with this newer legislature."

Large national for-profit charter management companies have joined regional powers like Mitchell to lead the charge. They've found allies in local lawmakers. Tillman, the co-chair of North Carolina's Senate education committee, for instance, recently berated state regulators because he was upset more schools were not being approved.   

North Carolina is at a crossroads when it comes to charters, said Eric Guckian, the top education adviser to Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican.

Two kinds of people get in the charter-school business, said Guckian: "Group one, they're looking for entrepreneurial opportunities. Group two, they're looking to run high-quality schools. My bias is toward the latter. That's not to say I have anything against entrepreneurship, but I don't think that's a reason for getting into the education space."

Gov. McCrory has tried to step in where the legislature has not. At his urging, the State Board of Education has gone beyond what the law requires and is requiring schools to submit salary information for employees of charter-management companies -- numbers that Mitchell believes should be private.

"There's no statutory basis for it," Mitchell said of the new requirements. His schools' board submitted basic budget documents in response to the agency's order, but it withheld information on management-company finances, stating that the board "does not possess individual salaries paid by any private corporation that furnishes services." Asked what he'll do if the agency objects, Mitchell said, "We'll see what they say and deal with it when it comes."

He views these new requirements as a sign that North Carolina is moving in the wrong direction, toward an overregulation of charter schools. "I see the banks of the river narrowing," he said. "In a few more years, there will just be a very narrow channel to navigate in. A lot of the freedoms will be regulated out."

Heather Vogell contributed to this story.

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danner then http://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpreston

Rocketship’sattorney, Paul Minney, recently filed anAmicus Briefon behalf of Ivy Academia Charter Schools in L.A.  Ivy Academia’s executive director, Yevgency Selivanov, was sentenced to 4 years in prison for embezzling state funds. In that brief, Minney, states, “Again, the court cases and other arguments cited above make it abundantly clear that the nonprofit operators of charter schools are private entities under contract with local school districts and are not the state, nor a county, nor a city, nor a town, nor a district, nor any other “public agency” of the state.”

Rocketship’s own legal council argues that they are indeed a private corporation. Rocketship is organized as a 501C3, with a separate land holder, Launchpad LLC.   For more, see this link.

With Rocketship’s aggressive growth, and profit generating plans for 50:1student to teacher ratios, we are increasingly worried about a lack of public oversight.  The criminal conviction above makes us all the more worried.

'Kathleen Carroll, a former government lawyer turned whistleblower at the California Commission On Teacher Credentialing CTC has filed a potentially explosive suit against CTC officials and the state government that charges that the Commission attorneys and management of the commission were engaged in numerous illegal acts possibly resulting in thousands of improperly sanctioned teachers in the state of California. Some of the charges in Carroll's charged the commission with tampering with the selection and composition of the Committee of credential members, CTC attorneys improperly tampering with case outcomes, acting outside their legal jurisdictional scope to go after teachers, promoting the existence of a high level of nepotism, cronyism, favoritism and conflicts of interest throughout the CTC and improperly maintaining underground regulations in violation of the administrative procedures act. It also alleges that CTC employees were retaliated against if they questioned the practices of anyone within CTC management. This case which was filed on November 14, 2012 in the Superior Court in Sacramento County also has national implications as teachers continue to be demonized, bullied, retaliated against for reporting wrongdoing by school administrators and continually losing their jobs all under the guise of education reform. Carroll v Commission on Teacher Credentialing et al., Sacramento Superior Court, Case No. 34-2012-00135527http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf

The above suit implies that the critical Commission on Teacher Credentialing might have been used as a vehicle to illegally prevent credentialing of public school teachers so that they would be forced to go to work at non-union charters throughout California and top staff including it's lawyers were involved in violating the California Education Code and other state and federal laws protecting the rights of teachers and students in California. The complaint also cites potential violations of the privacy rights of student records, found in the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The Commission is a critical education administrative body funded by the Credential holders themselves through application fees and exam fees. CTC is in charge of licensing California teachers, school administrators, and other school personnel. It is also involved in investigating misconduct complaints against credential holders and applicants, approving teacher preparation programs, including through charter chains and entering into contracts with private entities such as NCS Pearson in the development of education testing, teacher evaluations and curriculum development in California. The CTC also has a Committee on Accreditation which presumably accredits credential preparation programs.

It has played a key role in approving alternative routes to teacher certification, approval of teacher preparation programs within charter chains and for-profit colleges and has been intimately involved in teacher evaluations through its contract with the testing and publishing giant NCS Pearson. All of this government decision making while a number of its Commissioners were connected personally or financially with the industry they are supposed to regulate.

Carroll, who was a lawyer at the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for four years was fired after she blew the whistle and helped initiate an audit of the state commission which is directly under Governor Brown and the executive branch. In fact, her firing took place right in the middle of a state audit which included her reporting on the numerous illegal acts.

The California state auditors never independently verified the magnitude of the backlog, instead relying on the assertions of CTC management; individuals Carroll asserted were being dishonest about the existence of and specifics of the backlog in the first instance. CTC management asserted that over 12,000 misconduct reports were backlogged, but the actual number of delayed misconduct reports is still unknown due to the manipulated state audit.

Under the California Education Code section 44242.5, the CTC can investigate teachers by their receipt of particular types of information as outlined in the education code. The commission attorneys according to Carroll, were fishing for information about teachers and opening up cases in which they did not have jurisdiction. This could mean that thousands of teachers have been illegally sanctioned and prevented from receiving credentials in California. Without a credential, they cannot work, which would destroy their careers forcing many into bankruptcy, and possible loss of their homes.

This suit is critical as the push to deprive teachers of their due process rights continues throughout the state. Teachers at Los Angeles Unified report being detained unlawfully for hours in small cubicles without any means of communicating with anyone while detained. If these teacher jails sound shocking, they are- they are meant to break down the will of fully credentialed teachers in the push to replace them with less qualified, non-unionized staff.

As a result of not getting their state credentials because of illegal actions by government officials, potentially thousands of California teachers were also forced into non union low paying charters throughout the state, many of which do not require state teaching credentials. If true, the public has been defrauded, numerous teachers and others have been illegally harmed and thrown into abject poverty. And public education has been purposefully thrown into chaos at the hands of very dishonest, unethical and illegal actors.

It should be noted that NCS Pearson Inc., a third party contractor of CTC is being criminally investigated by the NY Attorney General along with other states for illegal kickbacks to officials who were voting on contracts for k-12 tests and certification tests. Pearson is also involved in the design of the common core standards and teacher assessments. NCS Pearson controls a large part of public education funding through their publishing empire, evaluations of teachers, tests and through their design of the "common core" standards. In essence Pearson has a virtual monopoly grip on public education funds in the United States.

Ting Sung was chair of the CTC commission at the same time she worked at the Natomas charter school that she founded with her husband, was also being paid by the California Charter Association CCA and Cambridge education as a senior education consultant and was supposed to be a "public" representative of the CTC. Sun is also on the board of the Turkish Gulen charter school chain called Magnolia Public Schools which is the largest charter operator in the US and has schools in the Sacramento area and throughout the state. The Gulen school chain has been involved in corrupt practices throughout the US in which teachers from the cult which runs the school, have been forced to give kickbacks to the Gulen cult and public funds have flowed only to Gulen owned businesses. CBS 60 minutes did a story on this chain and the Iman, Fatullah Gulen, who runs it from Pennsylvania.

It appears that Ting Sun failed to disclose a number of economic conflicts on her Fair Political Practices Commission FPPC form 700 which are required of all commission members since they are voting on contracts with public funds going to private companies. The question again arises where was the senate rules committee in performing their required due diligence on Sun before her senate confirmation to the CTC?

According to the suit, Carroll reported to Ting Sun that Mary Armstrong, Director of Professional Practices at the commission had lied to the commission about the specifics of the backlog of misconduct reports and cases. Carroll also reported to CTC Director Dale Janssen that misconduct reports and cases that were not being timely processed which could cause serious harm to students and also involved delayed sexual misconduct reports, including school district reports. Carroll also reported to Janssen that there was a high level of cronyism, nepotism and favoritism that was creating a negative impact on the working environment as employees of the CTC were fearful of retaliation.

Right after Carroll complained to Janssen, Janssen according to the suit hired an investigator who then sought to discredit Carroll included releasing private medical information about Carroll which was irrelevant to the existence of and specifics of the backlog. Was this an improper use of public funds?

In June of 2010, Janssen, Armstrong and Director of Administrative Services Christa Hill proposed to lay off Carroll supposedly as a "cost cutting" measure. But, when CTC realized the layoff would not be fast enough to get rid of Carroll before the state auditors arrived at CTC, they moved for dismissal.

Carroll had discovered that not only was the CTC illegally investigating some teachers but they were retaliating against CTC employees and educators based on perceived medical health disabilities and retaliated against any employee who questioned these methods. There was an epidemic of bullying at the commission with many employees working in fear.

Carroll was also denied union representation when Pope showed up at her office door demanding that she accompany him to the HR department. This was right in the middle of the audit and after Carroll had numerous meetings with the state auditors.

The California state audit of CTC, requested by California Senate Pro Tem Democratic party leader Darrell Steinberg was based on a complaint by Carroll on the massive systemic backlog of misconduct reports at CTC, illegal actions on part of the CTC attorneys and rampant nepotism, favoritism and potential conflicts throughout the agency. Carroll had met with Steinberg's staff and asked to have the audit but instead of having a real independent investigation, Steinberg and his staff made changes in the audit request. The State Auditor failed to account for a number of items requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee at Steinberg's request, citing CTC's failure to track documents and numerous computer problems. Carroll reported numerous violations that never found their way into the audit report. Was this a case of government damage control? Who was suppressing the evidence? Steinberg's office? The state auditor? Or both? Carroll has now suffered severe economic harm as result of reporting serious illegal acts by government officials.

A key player in Steinberg's office was his education advisor Susanna Cooper whose husband it turns out is Eric Douglas who owns Leading Resources inc. Leading Resources Inc has a number of public agency clients including the Bureau of State Audits which was doing the audit of the CTC. Cooper is also on the advisory board of WestEd. On May 5, 2010, the morning before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted on the audit request of CTC, Cooper sent an e-mail to Carroll's office e-mail address at CTC essentially sending her the draft of what she would say on behalf of Steinberg at this hearing. Carroll had informed all of Steinberg's staff about the fear of retaliation at the CTC and was shocked that Cooper had sent her this email at CTC since there was a real possibility that her e-mail was being monitored by this time.

After the audit report of CTC was released to the public on April 7, 2011, an oversight hearing took place at the Capitol. Carroll testified at this oversight hearing. As Carroll began to speak about the CTC attorneys looking at teachers they had no right to look at, Assembly member Ricardo Lara cut her off and told her that her time was up. After Carroll spoke, not one assembly person or senator had questions of Carroll about the systemic problems at the Commission despite the extensive material received about the specifics of the backlog and misconduct and the reign of harassment and bullying against CTC employees.

After the state audit oversight hearing, Executive Director Dale Janssen, Director of the Professional Practices Mary Armstrong and Assistant General Counsel Willard Leroy Pope all quickly left the CTC. Pope also had children on the payroll. Others have also left the agency. Willard Leroy Pope was replaced by attorney/ALJ Michael Barth. Barth was an ALJ for the Office of Administrative hearings, the special education division. Query what type of potential conflicts Barth's employment at CTC might pose. Barth previously worked for the CTC after leaving the employ of the law firm of Rothschild Wishek & Sands. The Rothschild firm has a contract with the California Teachers Association and represents teachers who come up for review by the CTC. Previously after Barth left the Rothschild firm, CTC had some sort of conflict cone set up around Barth. Given the numerous potential liability that conflicts pose for any entity, it is a wonder why CTC could not find a more neutral candidate for the job. Was this act purposeful? Time will tell.

This lawsuit has the potential to expose a lot, including the real possibility of criminal violations, including the conflicts of interest in the drive to shutdown public education and turn this system over to privatizers and billionaire speculators who see this as a growing area for high profits and little costs with no regard to a quality accessible public education system and certainly with no regard to human suffering as numerous people who report illegal acts get severely retaliated against. Economic harm is a powerful weapon and is used and abused too frequently by those in positions of power.

By Steve Zeltzerlvpsf@igc.org

pt2

 Over the last 30 years, a massive coordinated campaign has been funded to undermine public education through charters, trigger laws and pushing testing scores, and - most recently - online education that will eliminate teachers, which will funnel more profits to computer companies and billionaire entrepreneurs, including convicted felon Michael Milken.

The aim appears to be to make money from turning public education into a profit center for their investments. The Milken institute for example is behind K12 inc. (LRN), the largest U.S. operator of taxpayer-funded online schools and is a publicly traded company with major holdings by Knowledge Universe, owned by felon Milken, his brother Lowell and Larry Ellison, billionaire owner of Oracle in San Francisco.

These billionaires, like Eli Broad with the Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates through their foundation, the Fisher family, which founded the Gap corporation and operates the Kipp Foundation as well as the Walton Foundation, run by the family which owns Wal-Mart, have engaged in a massive coordinated corporate effort to push privatization of education by infiltrating governmental agencies and entities like school districts and placing their corporate operatives throughout the state educational system. In addition, by using the corporate controlled media, they attack public education and blame teachers for the education crisis.

In the mix and supporting this cabal at the California Teacher Credentialing (CTC) was Sacramento based Michelle Rhee and her billionaire funded group "Students First," which organizes and runs pro-privatization school board candidates - shills at boards throughout the country. It received $500,000 as start up money from the Broad Foundation and other billionaires including Arnold Tepper, who is a Democrat and owns Appaloosa Management. Another contributor is John Arnold, a former Enron trader who also gave $35,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in the 2012 election campaign and is who is also seeking to push legislation that will eliminate defined pensions for public school teachers and force them into 401k's run by his investment company.

According to accounts, Students First, which is a "non profit" 501c(3), will have a budget of over $225 million in 2010-2013. Part of this funding has been used to support reauthorization of "No Child Left Behind," which was also supported by President Obama, Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, and California Democratic Congressional leader George Miller. Rhee's husband Kevin Johnson, who is also mayor of Sacramento and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors also founded his own "non-profit" charter school as part of the St. Hope Academy in Sacramento and also runs the Sacramento High charter. Johnson has been implicated in a corruption scandal with illegal use of Federal funds and sexually harassing employees at the St. Hope Academy and inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor who attended his charter. Johnson is also an active supporter of the Gulen Magnolia Schools, while pushing his own charter schools in Sacramento.

On September 12, 2012, Arnie Duncan as part of his national privatization Department of Education tour came to Sacramento to push the Race To The Top and No Child Left Behind schemes. Duncan also lauded Michelle Rhee and her husband Kevin Johnson at a meeting in Sacramento as part of the U.S. Conference on Mayors, who are pushing for mayoral control of schools, mayoral control of school funding, mayoral control of school districts, and for mayors to be able to appoint school board members. This does not sound very democratic does it? In fact, Michelle Rhee on a recent PBS program can be heard saying to the interviewer: "This is not democracy" after being admonished by the city council for going outside of their instructions. Mayoral control of schools, which New York City has experienced under Bloomberg, appears the ultimate goal of these profiteers, while quashing any opposition from the tax paying public, busting education unions, and other organized workers and creating more charters.

Another supporter of privatization in Sacramento is David W. Gordon who is the Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools. Gordon is also on the WestEd Board of Directors, which pushes Core Standards and further growth of charter schools nationally and is controlled by the billionaire non-profit operations like the Lumina Foundation while WestEd receives funding from public school districts, public community colleges and public universities.

It should be noted that Steinberg was involved in supporting charters and gave $5,000 for privatization shill Gloria Romero from his political fund for Romero to run for State Superintendent of Instruction.

Romero who is now the head of California Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and also was a spokesperson for anti-labor California Proposition 32 which sought to prevent unions from collecting dues by onerous procedures on their rights. She also was the author while in the legislature of the Parent Trigger Laws in California, which have been used by privatizers to manipulate parents into shutting their public schools and turning them over to charter operations run by privateers.

The funders of the Parent Trigger Laws include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton (WalMart) Foundation. Romero's DFER is funded by Wall Street Hedge fund managers who are making investments into charter schools for use of public funds, while eliminating professional teachers and bringing in Teach For America (TFA) young teachers, who have been used to help destroy public education by undermining the quality of public education in mostly low income minority schools and by de-professionalizing the teaching profession by the elimination of long term skilled teachers. This displacement of senior teachers is a conscious policy of the supporters of privatization, since a profession teacher corp cost approximately 87% of the public education budget. School administrators harass and discriminate against long term skilled fully credentialed teachers who are now being demonized, bullied and retaliated against. This includes even being placed in euphemistic "rubber rooms" in Los Angeles and New York.

In fact, while potential criminal negligence and fraud along with potential misappropriation of public funds has taken place at the CTC Commission, the Brown administration, which is directly in charge of the commission, has not only covered it up, but actually appointed more officials that have financial conflicts of interests with public education including Brown's former Education Secretary Sue Burr. Brown appointed Burr as his education secretary despite the fact that she was executive director for the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association CCSESA. Burr, along with Gary Hart were intimately involved in drafting of the first charter school laws in California. CCSESA has been pushing for more charters and is funded by companies profiting from getting school contracts for online education and pushing more testing and charters. In January of this year, Burr resigned as Brown's Education Secretary and was appointed by him to the State Board of Education. She is also on Edsource board of directors.

Governor Brown is now demanding that the CSU and UC system implement a massive growth of online education benefiting these same tech profiteers or he will cutback and withhold state funding for these public institutions. Brown's wife, Anne Gust was the former Chief Administrative Officer/general counsel and Executive Vice President of the Gap Corporation. Gap through the Fisher's runs Rocketship schools and a chain of 70 Kipp charter schools throughout the country. On the board are owners of Viacom, Netflix and other billionaires like Mark Nunnelly, who is managing director of Bain Capital Board as well as Carrie Walton Penner who is a trustee for the Walton Family Foundation that owns Walmart. Carrie Walton Penner is also on the board of the California Charter School Association CCSA, EdVoice, and the Alliance For School Choice. The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, formerly of the State Board of Education is also on the board of Edvoice.

Edvoice is a very powerful political action committee and advocacy group in education policy and was one of the top five campaign contributors in the 2010 general election according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which at the time was investigating Edvoice for their potential improper use of independent expenditures. Eli Broad is also on the board of Directors of Edvoice.

Rocketship Learning had contracted with the lobbing firm, School Innovations and Advocacy (SI&A), whose clients include school districts, K-12 inc- largest online education company in U.S., Orange County Department of Education, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Santa Clara office of Education. Santa Clara County Office of Education has been approving the expansion of Rocketship Charter Schools in Santa Clara County. Rocket Learning is doing business in California, incorporated in Delaware but physically located in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A parent of one of the students of one of the Kipp Schools -Kipp Hartwood Academy Elementary in Santa Clara- discovered that in order to go to the school board he had to make an appointment to go to the Gap headquarters in San Francisco where the school board met. He was complaining about the clinical abuse his child faced at the school due to the "training" procedures at the Gap funded chain of schools.

California State Attorney Kamala Harris has also refused to respond to a request to investigate numerous potential conflicts of interest with government officials and public education funding that appears to exist throughout the state. The request to Harris was made back in December of 2011. No one from the Attorney General's Office has responded to date. The request was sent certified with return receipt. The request has been confirmed as received.

Of course any investigation would immediately implicate the Governor and other Democratic Party officials in the state who are supporting charters and privatization.California Democratic party chair John Burton is also on the board of Phoenix University, which has been engaged in defrauding the government and creating a diploma mill with the federal government on the hook for billions in loans to students.

There are too many organizations in the unregulated world of non-profits that are literally taking over our public education system to mention. But, a few other notable organizations involved in the restructuring and de-funding of public education include the Lumina Foundation and ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Commission. ALEC develops legislation such as the trigger laws which further privatization.

Also WestEd, a government agency through a joint powers agreement receives money both from many public entities such as school districts, CSU, UC and community colleges and private money through foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina. WestEd also received funding from NCS Pearson. WestEd pushes "core standards" and more testing in the schools. It should be noted that Lumina was a funder of ALEC. UC President Mark Yudof is also on the board of directors of Lumina and has pushed privatization at the UC system including online education with tech companies and UC private partnerships using public UC resources for new drugs that will benefit the privateers.

The counsel of WestEd, Leah Williams based in San Francisco refused to provide financial conflict of interest statements saying that the California Fair Practices Commission told them they did not have to provide such material. While the FPPC may not have jurisdiction over WestEd, as WestEd appears not be a quasi government. It does however receive state public education tax dollars and public funds from school and college districts throughout the country. This raises fundamental questions of transparency and where are our public education tax dollars are going? The public has a right to know.

In fact, our public education tax dollars are going to many non-profits, many organizations that produce reports about how bad our public education system is and how things need to be "reformed". These same entities have the most to gain by claiming doom. Doom means things need to change and these greedy tax grabbers are all too willing to be the first in line with their wallets wide open with false promises of the best way to improve education. But we must ask: The best way for whom? Certainly not the best way for students, especially students of low income, special needs students or English language learners.

It should also be noted that Williams of WestEd has also been appointed to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges WASC, which is the regional accrediting commission for senior high schools, colleges, and universities. The ACCJC which is under WASC, accredits community colleges. ACCJC's director Barbara Beno is demanding the San Francisco City College and other public community colleges either sell off parts of their colleges, fire teachers, cut wages and healthcare for the staff or they will lose their accreditation. This use of WASC and ACCJC, which are private groups, to push for the liquidation of public education is now becoming apparent to tens of thousands of educators and students as the organization goes on a wrecking operation in our public higher education system. Beno is also on the advisory board of Campaign for College Opportunity (another non-profit) with Lumina Board member Frank Alvarez. The privatizers and their influence over public education is a frontal attack on the public education system and any equality in this education system.

B. Teri Burns has been a long time publicly elected school board member of Sacramento County. Until recently, Burns was a lobbyist with School Innovations and Advocacy whose clients include public entities such as Santa Clara County Office of Education and San Juan Unified school district. These school districts or county offices are funding lobbying firms that are engaged in pushing for privatization of education. School Innovations and Advocacy also is a lobbyist for private entities that are stripping tax dollars away from school districts. School Innovations and Advocacy lobbies on behalf of K-12 inc. and Rocketship Learning.

B. Teri Burns is an elected school board member of Natomas Unified in Sacramento County. Natomas Unified is where Ting Sun of CTC fame has her charter academies. Does anyone see a potential conflict yet? Keep looking- it is right in front of you. K-12 Inc; Rocketship Learning; school districts spending money on lobbyists. WestEd also gets public education tax dollars. The question of how much public money is going to lobbyists and these so-called non-profits is yet unanswered but it is extensive? It also raises the question do we really have an education budget crisis or was there money being funneled into the profiteers? It should be noted that all charter schools are non-profit corporations. The real question is whether these corporateers and their media are crying wolf in order to push for the destruction of more public schools.

The incestuous connections and illegal siphoning off of public funds for profit by pubic officials who have interests in these same enterprises appears to be clear criminal conflict of interest and has developed and expanded over decades in California and throughout the country. In the People v. Honig case, former Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bill Honig was convicted of felony conflicts of interest for having an educational non-profit out of his home with his wife. The judge stated what he and his wife were doing was essentially money laundering. Where is Bill Honig today? Jerry Brown rewarded him by trying to have Honig appointed to the State Board of Education. He withdrew his appointment and Honig now works for the California Department of Education.

If ex-CTC attorney Kathleen Carroll's suit is successful in going forward despite the expected stiff opposition by the powerful corporate interests and politicians who represent them, it has the potential of exposing very corrupt and nefarious connections and actions.

The California Teachers Association CTA/NEA and the California Federation of Teachers CFT/AFT must be aware of these financial conflicts of interests, the corporate connections and the legal violations against teachers, but have to this date refused either to educate their members about these connections or engage in a political education campaign to expose those who are demolishing the public education system. They are also silent about any demand that the State Attorney Kamala Harris investigate and prosecute these systemic financial conflicts of interests. Is it because the unions also have taken money from Gates and other privatizers? The fact that the leadership of the NEA and AFT have taken millions from these billionaire funded foundations and even advertise for their locals to apply for money from these operations raise serious question even about conflicts of interests by the top union officials of these education unions.

A growing number of teachers and education workers are asking where their unions have been as this wrecking operation has escalated? Is Gates using the divide and conquer method to cause dissent within the union by tempting union officials with big bucks? According to Dr. Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of The Great American School System, Gates has given money to NEA. Divide and conquer is a classic union busting technique and it appears to be working within the education unions. The rank and file of education unions around the country are beginning to connect the dots of the attack on education and draw the lessons that these attacks are not only coming from the profiteers but are taking place with the complicity and silence of their union leadership.The clearest example of this was the invitation to Bill Gates to Address the 2011 AFT convention made by AFT president Randi Weingarten who also happened to be a graduate of the Broad Academy.

For more on the letter sent to Attorney General Kamala Harris see:http://www.upwa.info/documents/KamalaHarrisRequest.htm

http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf"

==

Kathleen Carroll, a former government lawyer turned whistleblower at the California Commission On Teacher Credentialing CTC has filed a potentially explosive suit against CTC officials and the state government that charges that the Commission attorneys and management of the commission were engaged in numerous illegal acts possibly resulting in thousands of improperly sanctioned teachers in the state of California. Some of the charges in Carroll's charged the commission with tampering with the selection and composition of the Committee of credential members, CTC attorneys improperly tampering with case outcomes, acting outside their legal jurisdictional scope to go after teachers, promoting the existence of a high level of nepotism, cronyism, favoritism and conflicts of interest throughout the CTC and improperly maintaining underground regulations in violation of the administrative procedures act. It also alleges that CTC employees were retaliated against if they questioned the practices of anyone within CTC management.

This case which was filed on November 14, 2012 in the Superior Court in Sacramento County also has national implications as teachers continue to be demonized, bullied, retaliated against for reporting wrongdoing by school administrators and continually losing their jobs all under the guise of education reform.

Carroll v Commission on Teacher Credentialing et al., Sacramento Superior Court, Case No. 34-2012-00135527

http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf

The above suit implies that the critical Commission on Teacher Credentialing might have been used as a vehicle to illegally prevent credentialing of public school teachers so that they would be forced to go to work at non-union charters throughout California and top staff including it's lawyers were involved in violating the California Education Code and other state and federal laws protecting the rights of teachers and students in California. The complaint also cites potential violations of the privacy rights of student records, found in the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The Commission is a critical education administrative body funded by the Credential holders themselves through application fees and exam fees. CTC is in charge of licensing California teachers, school administrators, and other school personnel. It is also involved in investigating misconduct complaints against credential holders and applicants, approving teacher preparation programs, including through charter chains and entering into contracts with private entities such as NCS Pearson in the development of education testing, teacher evaluations and curriculum development in California. The CTC also has a Committee on Accreditation which presumably accredits credential preparation programs.

It has played a key role in approving alternative routes to teacher certification, approval of teacher preparation programs within charter chains and for-profit colleges and has been intimately involved in teacher evaluations through its contract with the testing and publishing giant NCS Pearson. All of this government decision making while a number of its Commissioners were connected personally or financially with the industry they are supposed to regulate.

Carroll, who was a lawyer at the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for four years was fired after she blew the whistle and helped initiate an audit of the state commission which is directly under Governor Brown and the executive branch. In fact, her firing took place right in the middle of a state audit which included her reporting on the numerous illegal acts.

The California state auditors never independently verified the magnitude of the backlog, instead relying on the assertions of CTC management; individuals Carroll asserted were being dishonest about the existence of and specifics of the backlog in the first instance. CTC management asserted that over 12,000 misconduct reports were backlogged, but the actual number of delayed misconduct reports is still unknown due to the manipulated state audit.

Under the California Education Code section 44242.5, the CTC can investigate teachers by their receipt of particular types of information as outlined in the education code. The commission attorneys according to Carroll, were fishing for information about teachers and opening up cases in which they did not have jurisdiction. This could mean that thousands of teachers have been illegally sanctioned and prevented from receiving credentials in California. Without a credential, they cannot work, which would destroy their careers forcing many into bankruptcy, and possible loss of their homes.

This suit is critical as the push to deprive teachers of their due process rights continues throughout the state. Teachers at Los Angeles Unified report being detained unlawfully for hours in small cubicles without any means of communicating with anyone while detained. If these teacher jails sound shocking, they are- they are meant to break down the will of fully credentialed teachers in the push to replace them with less qualified, non-unionized staff.

As a result of not getting their state credentials because of illegal actions by government officials, potentially thousands of California teachers were also forced into non union low paying charters throughout the state, many of which do not require state teaching credentials. If true, the public has been defrauded, numerous teachers and others have been illegally harmed and thrown into abject poverty. And public education has been purposefully thrown into chaos at the hands of very dishonest, unethical and illegal actors.

It should be noted that NCS Pearson Inc., a third party contractor of CTC is being criminally investigated by the NY Attorney General along with other states for illegal kickbacks to officials who were voting on contracts for k-12 tests and certification tests. Pearson is also involved in the design of the common core standards and teacher assessments.

NCS Pearson controls a large part of public education funding through their publishing empire, evaluations of teachers, tests and through their design of the "common core" standards. In essence Pearson has a virtual monopoly grip on public education funds in the United States.

Ting Sung was chair of the CTC commission at the same time she worked at the Natomas charter school that she founded with her husband, was also being paid by the California Charter Association CCA and Cambridge education as a senior education consultant and was supposed to be a "public" representative of the CTC. Sun is also on the board of the Turkish Gulen charter school chain called Magnolia Public Schools which is the largest charter operator in the US and has schools in the Sacramento area and throughout the state. The Gulen school chain has been involved in corrupt practices throughout the US in which teachers from the cult which runs the school, have been forced to give kickbacks to the Gulen cult and public funds have flowed only to Gulen owned businesses. CBS 60 minutes did a story on this chain and the Iman, Fatullah Gulen, who runs it from Pennsylvania.

It appears that Ting Sun failed to disclose a number of economic conflicts on her Fair Political Practices Commission FPPC form 700 which are required of all commission members since they are voting on contracts with public funds going to private companies. The question again arises where was the senate rules committee in performing their required due diligence on Sun before her senate confirmation to the CTC?

According to the suit, Carroll reported to Ting Sun that Mary Armstrong, Director of Professional Practices at the commission had lied to the commission about the specifics of the backlog of misconduct reports and cases. Carroll also reported to CTC Director Dale Janssen that misconduct reports and cases that were not being timely processed which could cause serious harm to students and also involved delayed sexual misconduct reports, including school district reports. Carroll also reported to Janssen that there was a high level of cronyism, nepotism and favoritism that was creating a negative impact on the working environment as employees of the CTC were fearful of retaliation.

Right after Carroll complained to Janssen, Janssen according to the suit hired an investigator who then sought to discredit Carroll included releasing private medical information about Carroll which was irrelevant to the existence of and specifics of the backlog. Was this an improper use of public funds?

In June of 2010, Janssen, Armstrong and Director of Administrative Services Christa Hill proposed to lay off Carroll supposedly as a "cost cutting" measure. But, when CTC realized the layoff would not be fast enough to get rid of Carroll before the state auditors arrived at CTC, they moved for dismissal.

Carroll had discovered that not only was the CTC illegally investigating some teachers but they were retaliating against CTC employees and educators based on perceived medical health disabilities and retaliated against any employee who questioned these methods. There was an epidemic of bullying at the commission with many employees working in fear.

Carroll was also denied union representation when Pope showed up at her office door demanding that she accompany him to the HR department. This was right in the middle of the audit and after Carroll had numerous meetings with the state auditors.

The California state audit of CTC, requested by California Senate Pro Tem Democratic party leader Darrell Steinberg was based on a complaint by Carroll on the massive systemic backlog of misconduct reports at CTC, illegal actions on part of the CTC attorneys and rampant nepotism, favoritism and potential conflicts throughout the agency. Carroll had met with Steinberg's staff and asked to have the audit but instead of having a real independent investigation, Steinberg and his staff made changes in the audit request. The State Auditor failed to account for a number of items requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee at Steinberg's request, citing CTC's failure to track documents and numerous computer problems. Carroll reported numerous violations that never found their way into the audit report. Was this a case of government damage control? Who was suppressing the evidence? Steinberg's office? The state auditor? Or both? Carroll has now suffered severe economic harm as result of reporting serious illegal acts by government officials.

A key player in Steinberg's office was his education advisor Susanna Cooper whose husband it turns out is Eric Douglas who owns Leading Resources inc. Leading Resources Inc has a number of public agency clients including the Bureau of State Audits which was doing the audit of the CTC. Cooper is also on the advisory board of WestEd. On May 5, 2010, the morning before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted on the audit request of CTC, Cooper sent an e-mail to Carroll's office e-mail address at CTC essentially sending her the draft of what she would say on behalf of Steinberg at this hearing. Carroll had informed all of Steinberg's staff about the fear of retaliation at the CTC and was shocked that Cooper had sent her this email at CTC since there was a real possibility that her e-mail was being monitored by this time.

After the audit report of CTC was released to the public on April 7, 2011, an oversight hearing took place at the Capitol. Carroll testified at this oversight hearing. As Carroll began to speak about the CTC attorneys looking at teachers they had no right to look at, Assembly member Ricardo Lara cut her off and told her that her time was up. After Carroll spoke, not one assembly person or senator had questions of Carroll about the systemic problems at the Commission despite the extensive material received about the specifics of the backlog and misconduct and the reign of harassment and bullying against CTC employees.

After the state audit oversight hearing, Executive Director Dale Janssen, Director of the Professional Practices Mary Armstrong and Assistant General Counsel Willard Leroy Pope all quickly left the CTC. Pope also had children on the payroll. Others have also left the agency. Willard Leroy Pope was replaced by attorney/ALJ Michael Barth. Barth was an ALJ for the Office of Administrative hearings, the special education division. Query what type of potential conflicts Barth's employment at CTC might pose. Barth previously worked for the CTC after leaving the employ of the law firm of Rothschild Wishek & Sands. The Rothschild firm has a contract with the California Teachers Association and represents teachers who come up for review by the CTC. Previously after Barth left the Rothschild firm, CTC had some sort of conflict cone set up around Barth. Given the numerous potential liability that conflicts pose for any entity, it is a wonder why CTC could not find a more neutral candidate for the job. Was this act purposeful? Time will tell.

This lawsuit has the potential to expose a lot, including the real possibility of criminal violations, including the conflicts of interest in the drive to shutdown public education and turn this system over to privatizers and billionaire speculators who see this as a growing area for high profits and little costs with no regard to a quality accessible public education system and certainly with no regard to human suffering as numerous people who report illegal acts get severely retaliated against. Economic harm is a powerful weapon and is used and abused too frequently by those in positions of power.

By Steve Zeltzer

lvpsf@igc.org

pt2

 Over the last 30 years, a massive coordinated campaign has been funded to undermine public education through charters, trigger laws and pushing testing scores, and - most recently - online education that will eliminate teachers, which will funnel more profits to computer companies and billionaire entrepreneurs, including convicted felon Michael Milken.

The aim appears to be to make money from turning public education into a profit center for their investments. The Milken institute for example is behind K12 inc. (LRN), the largest U.S. operator of taxpayer-funded online schools and is a publicly traded company with major holdings by Knowledge Universe, owned by felon Milken, his brother Lowell and Larry Ellison, billionaire owner of Oracle in San Francisco.

These billionaires, like Eli Broad with the Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates through their foundation, the Fisher family, which founded the Gap corporation and operates the Kipp Foundation as well as the Walton Foundation, run by the family which owns Wal-Mart, have engaged in a massive coordinated corporate effort to push privatization of education by infiltrating governmental agencies and entities like school districts and placing their corporate operatives throughout the state educational system. In addition, by using the corporate controlled media, they attack public education and blame teachers for the education crisis.

In the mix and supporting this cabal at the California Teacher Credentialing (CTC) was Sacramento based Michelle Rhee and her billionaire funded group "Students First," which organizes and runs pro-privatization school board candidates - shills at boards throughout the country. It received $500,000 as start up money from the Broad Foundation and other billionaires including Arnold Tepper, who is a Democrat and owns Appaloosa Management. Another contributor is John Arnold, a former Enron trader who also gave $35,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in the 2012 election campaign and is who is also seeking to push legislation that will eliminate defined pensions for public school teachers and force them into 401k's run by his investment company.

According to accounts, Students First, which is a "non profit" 501c(3), will have a budget of over $225 million in 2010-2013. Part of this funding has been used to support reauthorization of "No Child Left Behind," which was also supported by President Obama, Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, and California Democratic Congressional leader George Miller. Rhee's husband Kevin Johnson, who is also mayor of Sacramento and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors also founded his own "non-profit" charter school as part of the St. Hope Academy in Sacramento and also runs the Sacramento High charter. Johnson has been implicated in a corruption scandal with illegal use of Federal funds and sexually harassing employees at the St. Hope Academy and inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor who attended his charter. Johnson is also an active supporter of the Gulen Magnolia Schools, while pushing his own charter schools in Sacramento.

On September 12, 2012, Arnie Duncan as part of his national privatization Department of Education tour came to Sacramento to push the Race To The Top and No Child Left Behind schemes. Duncan also lauded Michelle Rhee and her husband Kevin Johnson at a meeting in Sacramento as part of the U.S. Conference on Mayors, who are pushing for mayoral control of schools, mayoral control of school funding, mayoral control of school districts, and for mayors to be able to appoint school board members. This does not sound very democratic does it? In fact, Michelle Rhee on a recent PBS program can be heard saying to the interviewer: "This is not democracy" after being admonished by the city council for going outside of their instructions. Mayoral control of schools, which New York City has experienced under Bloomberg, appears the ultimate goal of these profiteers, while quashing any opposition from the tax paying public, busting education unions, and other organized workers and creating more charters.

Another supporter of privatization in Sacramento is David W. Gordon who is the Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools. Gordon is also on the WestEd Board of Directors, which pushes Core Standards and further growth of charter schools nationally and is controlled by the billionaire non-profit operations like the Lumina Foundation while WestEd receives funding from public school districts, public community colleges and public universities.

It should be noted that Steinberg was involved in supporting charters and gave $5,000 for privatization shill Gloria Romero from his political fund for Romero to run for State Superintendent of Instruction.

Romero who is now the head of California Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and also was a spokesperson for anti-labor California Proposition 32 which sought to prevent unions from collecting dues by onerous procedures on their rights. She also was the author while in the legislature of the Parent Trigger Laws in California, which have been used by privatizers to manipulate parents into shutting their public schools and turning them over to charter operations run by privateers.

The funders of the Parent Trigger Laws include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton (WalMart) Foundation. Romero's DFER is funded by Wall Street Hedge fund managers who are making investments into charter schools for use of public funds, while eliminating professional teachers and bringing in Teach For America (TFA) young teachers, who have been used to help destroy public education by undermining the quality of public education in mostly low income minority schools and by de-professionalizing the teaching profession by the elimination of long term skilled teachers. This displacement of senior teachers is a conscious policy of the supporters of privatization, since a profession teacher corp cost approximately 87% of the public education budget. School administrators harass and discriminate against long term skilled fully credentialed teachers who are now being demonized, bullied and retaliated against. This includes even being placed in euphemistic "rubber rooms" in Los Angeles and New York.

In fact, while potential criminal negligence and fraud along with potential misappropriation of public funds has taken place at the CTC Commission, the Brown administration, which is directly in charge of the commission, has not only covered it up, but actually appointed more officials that have financial conflicts of interests with public education including Brown's former Education Secretary Sue Burr. Brown appointed Burr as his education secretary despite the fact that she was executive director for the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association CCSESA. Burr, along with Gary Hart were intimately involved in drafting of the first charter school laws in California. CCSESA has been pushing for more charters and is funded by companies profiting from getting school contracts for online education and pushing more testing and charters. In January of this year, Burr resigned as Brown's Education Secretary and was appointed by him to the State Board of Education. She is also on Edsource board of directors.

Governor Brown is now demanding that the CSU and UC system implement a massive growth of online education benefiting these same tech profiteers or he will cutback and withhold state funding for these public institutions. Brown's wife, Anne Gust was the former Chief Administrative Officer/general counsel and Executive Vice President of the Gap Corporation. Gap through the Fisher's runs Rocketship schools and a chain of 70 Kipp charter schools throughout the country. On the board are owners of Viacom, Netflix and other billionaires like Mark Nunnelly, who is managing director of Bain Capital Board as well as Carrie Walton Penner who is a trustee for the Walton Family Foundation that owns Walmart. Carrie Walton Penner is also on the board of the California Charter School Association CCSA, EdVoice, and the Alliance For School Choice. The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, formerly of the State Board of Education is also on the board of Edvoice.

Edvoice is a very powerful political action committee and advocacy group in education policy and was one of the top five campaign contributors in the 2010 general election according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which at the time was investigating Edvoice for their potential improper use of independent expenditures. Eli Broad is also on the board of Directors of Edvoice.

Rocketship Learning had contracted with the lobbing firm, School Innovations and Advocacy (SI&A), whose clients include school districts, K-12 inc- largest online education company in U.S., Orange County Department of Education, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Santa Clara office of Education. Santa Clara County Office of Education has been approving the expansion of Rocketship Charter Schools in Santa Clara County. Rocket Learning is doing business in California, incorporated in Delaware but physically located in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A parent of one of the students of one of the Kipp Schools -Kipp Hartwood Academy Elementary in Santa Clara- discovered that in order to go to the school board he had to make an appointment to go to the Gap headquarters in San Francisco where the school board met. He was complaining about the clinical abuse his child faced at the school due to the "training" procedures at the Gap funded chain of schools.

California State Attorney Kamala Harris has also refused to respond to a request to investigate numerous potential conflicts of interest with government officials and public education funding that appears to exist throughout the state. The request to Harris was made back in December of 2011. No one from the Attorney General's Office has responded to date. The request was sent certified with return receipt. The request has been confirmed as received.

Of course any investigation would immediately implicate the Governor and other Democratic Party officials in the state who are supporting charters and privatization.

California Democratic party chair John Burton is also on the board of Phoenix University, which has been engaged in defrauding the government and creating a diploma mill with the federal government on the hook for billions in loans to students.

There are too many organizations in the unregulated world of non-profits that are literally taking over our public education system to mention. But, a few other notable organizations involved in the restructuring and de-funding of public education include the Lumina Foundation and ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Commission. ALEC develops legislation such as the trigger laws which further privatization.

Also WestEd, a government agency through a joint powers agreement receives money both from many public entities such as school districts, CSU, UC and community colleges and private money through foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina. WestEd also received funding from NCS Pearson. WestEd pushes "core standards" and more testing in the schools. It should be noted that Lumina was a funder of ALEC. UC President Mark Yudof is also on the board of directors of Lumina and has pushed privatization at the UC system including online education with tech companies and UC private partnerships using public UC resources for new drugs that will benefit the privateers.

The counsel of WestEd, Leah Williams based in San Francisco refused to provide financial conflict of interest statements saying that the California Fair Practices Commission told them they did not have to provide such material. While the FPPC may not have jurisdiction over WestEd, as WestEd appears not be a quasi government. It does however receive state public education tax dollars and public funds from school and college districts throughout the country. This raises fundamental questions of transparency and where are our public education tax dollars are going? The public has a right to know.

In fact, our public education tax dollars are going to many non-profits, many organizations that produce reports about how bad our public education system is and how things need to be "reformed". These same entities have the most to gain by claiming doom. Doom means things need to change and these greedy tax grabbers are all too willing to be the first in line with their wallets wide open with false promises of the best way to improve education. But we must ask: The best way for whom? Certainly not the best way for students, especially students of low income, special needs students or English language learners.

It should also be noted that Williams of WestEd has also been appointed to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges WASC, which is the regional accrediting commission for senior high schools, colleges, and universities. The ACCJC which is under WASC, accredits community colleges. ACCJC's director Barbara Beno is demanding the San Francisco City College and other public community colleges either sell off parts of their colleges, fire teachers, cut wages and healthcare for the staff or they will lose their accreditation. This use of WASC and ACCJC, which are private groups, to push for the liquidation of public education is now becoming apparent to tens of thousands of educators and students as the organization goes on a wrecking operation in our public higher education system. Beno is also on the advisory board of Campaign for College Opportunity (another non-profit) with Lumina Board member Frank Alvarez. The privatizers and their influence over public education is a frontal attack on the public education system and any equality in this education system.

B. Teri Burns has been a long time publicly elected school board member of Sacramento County. Until recently, Burns was a lobbyist with School Innovations and Advocacy whose clients include public entities such as Santa Clara County Office of Education and San Juan Unified school district. These school districts or county offices are funding lobbying firms that are engaged in pushing for privatization of education. School Innovations and Advocacy also is a lobbyist for private entities that are stripping tax dollars away from school districts. School Innovations and Advocacy lobbies on behalf of K-12 inc. and Rocketship Learning.

B. Teri Burns is an elected school board member of Natomas Unified in Sacramento County. Natomas Unified is where Ting Sun of CTC fame has her charter academies. Does anyone see a potential conflict yet? Keep looking- it is right in front of you. K-12 Inc; Rocketship Learning; school districts spending money on lobbyists. WestEd also gets public education tax dollars. The question of how much public money is going to lobbyists and these so-called non-profits is yet unanswered but it is extensive? It also raises the question do we really have an education budget crisis or was there money being funneled into the profiteers? It should be noted that all charter schools are non-profit corporations. The real question is whether these corporateers and their media are crying wolf in order to push for the destruction of more public schools.

The incestuous connections and illegal siphoning off of public funds for profit by pubic officials who have interests in these same enterprises appears to be clear criminal conflict of interest and has developed and expanded over decades in California and throughout the country. In the People v. Honig case, former Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bill Honig was convicted of felony conflicts of interest for having an educational non-profit out of his home with his wife. The judge stated what he and his wife were doing was essentially money laundering. Where is Bill Honig today? Jerry Brown rewarded him by trying to have Honig appointed to the State Board of Education. He withdrew his appointment and Honig now works for the California Department of Education.

If ex-CTC attorney Kathleen Carroll's suit is successful in going forward despite the expected stiff opposition by the powerful corporate interests and politicians who represent them, it has the potential of exposing very corrupt and nefarious connections and actions.

The California Teachers Association CTA/NEA and the California Federation of Teachers CFT/AFT must be aware of these financial conflicts of interests, the corporate connections and the legal violations against teachers, but have to this date refused either to educate their members about these connections or engage in a political education campaign to expose those who are demolishing the public education system. They are also silent about any demand that the State Attorney Kamala Harris investigate and prosecute these systemic financial conflicts of interests. Is it because the unions also have taken money from Gates and other privatizers? The fact that the leadership of the NEA and AFT have taken millions from these billionaire funded foundations and even advertise for their locals to apply for money from these operations raise serious question even about conflicts of interests by the top union officials of these education unions.

A growing number of teachers and education workers are asking where their unions have been as this wrecking operation has escalated? Is Gates using the divide and conquer method to cause dissent within the union by tempting union officials with big bucks? According to Dr. Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of The Great American School System, Gates has given money to NEA. Divide and conquer is a classic union busting technique and it appears to be working within the education unions. The rank and file of education unions around the country are beginning to connect the dots of the attack on education and draw the lessons that these attacks are not only coming from the profiteers but are taking place with the complicity and silence of their union leadership.

The clearest example of this was the invitation to Bill Gates to Address the 2011 AFT convention made by AFT president Randi Weingarten who also happened to be a graduate of the Broad Academy.

==  

pt 1:

_{:{:{:{Kathleen Carroll, a former government lawyer turned whistleblower at the California Commission On Teacher Credentialing CTC has filed a potentially explosive suit against CTC officials and the state government that charges that the Commission attorneys and management of the commission were engaged in numerous illegal acts possibly resulting in thousands of improperly sanctioned teachers in the state of California. Some of the charges in Carroll's charged the commission with tampering with the selection and composition of the Committee of credential members, CTC attorneys improperly tampering with case outcomes, acting outside their legal jurisdictional scope to go after teachers, promoting the existence of a high level of nepotism, cronyism, favoritism and conflicts of interest throughout the CTC and improperly maintaining underground regulations in violation of the administrative procedures act. It also alleges that CTC employees were retaliated against if they questioned the practices of anyone within CTC management. 

This case which was filed on November 14, 2012 in the Superior Court in Sacramento County also has national implications as teachers continue to be demonized, bullied, retaliated against for reporting wrongdoing by school administrators and continually losing their jobs all under the guise of education reform. 

Carroll v Commission on Teacher Credentialing et al., Sacramento Superior Court, Case No. 34-2012-00135527

http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf

The above suit implies that the critical Commission on Teacher Credentialing might have been used as a vehicle to illegally prevent credentialing of public school teachers so that they would be forced to go to work at non-union charters throughout California and top staff including it's lawyers were involved in violating the California Education Code and other state and federal laws protecting the rights of teachers and students in California. The complaint also cites potential violations of the privacy rights of student records, found in the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

The Commission is a critical education administrative body funded by the Credential holders themselves through application fees and exam fees. CTC is in charge of licensing California teachers, school administrators, and other school personnel. It is also involved in investigating misconduct complaints against credential holders and applicants, approving teacher preparation programs, including through charter chains and entering into contracts with private entities such as NCS Pearson in the development of education testing, teacher evaluations and curriculum development in California. The CTC also has a Committee on Accreditation which presumably accredits credential preparation programs.

It has played a key role in approving alternative routes to teacher certification, approval of teacher preparation programs within charter chains and for-profit colleges and has been intimately involved in teacher evaluations through its contract with the testing and publishing giant NCS Pearson. All of this government decision making while a number of its Commissioners were connected personally or financially with the industry they are supposed to regulate.

Carroll, who was a lawyer at the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for four years was fired after she blew the whistle and helped initiate an audit of the state commission which is directly under Governor Brown and the executive branch. In fact, her firing took place right in the middle of a state audit which included her reporting on the numerous illegal acts.

The California state auditors never independently verified the magnitude of the backlog, instead relying on the assertions of CTC management; individuals Carroll asserted were being dishonest about the existence of and specifics of the backlog in the first instance. CTC management asserted that over 12,000 misconduct reports were backlogged, but the actual number of delayed misconduct reports is still unknown due to the manipulated state audit. 

Under the California Education Code section 44242.5, the CTC can investigate teachers by their receipt of particular types of information as outlined in the education code. The commission attorneys according to Carroll, were fishing for information about teachers and opening up cases in which they did not have jurisdiction. This could mean that thousands of teachers have been illegally sanctioned and prevented from receiving credentials in California. Without a credential, they cannot work, which would destroy their careers forcing many into bankruptcy, and possible loss of their homes. 

This suit is critical as the push to deprive teachers of their due process rights continues throughout the state. Teachers at Los Angeles Unified report being detained unlawfully for hours in small cubicles without any means of communicating with anyone while detained. If these teacher jails sound shocking, they are- they are meant to break down the will of fully credentialed teachers in the push to replace them with less qualified, non-unionized staff.

As a result of not getting their state credentials because of illegal actions by government officials, potentially thousands of California teachers were also forced into non union low paying charters throughout the state, many of which do not require state teaching credentials. If true, the public has been defrauded, numerous teachers and others have been illegally harmed and thrown into abject poverty. And public education has been purposefully thrown into chaos at the hands of very dishonest, unethical and illegal actors.

It should be noted that NCS Pearson Inc., a third party contractor of CTC is being criminally investigated by the NY Attorney General along with other states for illegal kickbacks to officials who were voting on contracts for k-12 tests and certification tests. Pearson is also involved in the design of the common core standards and teacher assessments. 

NCS Pearson controls a large part of public education funding through their publishing empire, evaluations of teachers, tests and through their design of the "common core" standards. In essence Pearson has a virtual monopoly grip on public education funds in the United States.

Ting Sung was chair of the CTC commission at the same time she worked at the Natomas charter school that she founded with her husband, was also being paid by the California Charter Association CCA and Cambridge education as a senior education consultant and was supposed to be a "public" representative of the CTC. Sun is also on the board of the Turkish Gulen charter school chain called Magnolia Public Schools which is the largest charter operator in the US and has schools in the Sacramento area and throughout the state. The Gulen school chain has been involved in corrupt practices throughout the US in which teachers from the cult which runs the school, have been forced to give kickbacks to the Gulen cult and public funds have flowed only to Gulen owned businesses. CBS 60 minutes did a story on this chain and the Iman, Fatullah Gulen, who runs it from Pennsylvania.

It appears that Ting Sun failed to disclose a number of economic conflicts on her Fair Political Practices Commission FPPC form 700 which are required of all commission members since they are voting on contracts with public funds going to private companies. The question again arises where was the senate rules committee in performing their required due diligence on Sun before her senate confirmation to the CTC?

According to the suit, Carroll reported to Ting Sun that Mary Armstrong, Director of Professional Practices at the commission had lied to the commission about the specifics of the backlog of misconduct reports and cases. Carroll also reported to CTC Director Dale Janssen that misconduct reports and cases that were not being timely processed which could cause serious harm to students and also involved delayed sexual misconduct reports, including school district reports. Carroll also reported to Janssen that there was a high level of cronyism, nepotism and favoritism that was creating a negative impact on the working environment as employees of the CTC were fearful of retaliation.

Right after Carroll complained to Janssen, Janssen according to the suit hired an investigator who then sought to discredit Carroll included releasing private medical information about Carroll which was irrelevant to the existence of and specifics of the backlog. Was this an improper use of public funds? 

In June of 2010, Janssen, Armstrong and Director of Administrative Services Christa Hill proposed to lay off Carroll supposedly as a "cost cutting" measure. But, when CTC realized the layoff would not be fast enough to get rid of Carroll before the state auditors arrived at CTC, they moved for dismissal.

Carroll had discovered that not only was the CTC illegally investigating some teachers but they were retaliating against CTC employees and educators based on perceived medical health disabilities and retaliated against any employee who questioned these methods. There was an epidemic of bullying at the commission with many employees working in fear.

Carroll was also denied union representation when Pope showed up at her office door demanding that she accompany him to the HR department. This was right in the middle of the audit and after Carroll had numerous meetings with the state auditors.

The California state audit of CTC, requested by California Senate Pro Tem Democratic party leader Darrell Steinberg was based on a complaint by Carroll on the massive systemic backlog of misconduct reports at CTC, illegal actions on part of the CTC attorneys and rampant nepotism, favoritism and potential conflicts throughout the agency. Carroll had met with Steinberg's staff and asked to have the audit but instead of having a real independent investigation, Steinberg and his staff made changes in the audit request. The State Auditor failed to account for a number of items requested by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee at Steinberg's request, citing CTC's failure to track documents and numerous computer problems. Carroll reported numerous violations that never found their way into the audit report. Was this a case of government damage control? Who was suppressing the evidence? Steinberg's office? The state auditor? Or both? Carroll has now suffered severe economic harm as result of reporting serious illegal acts by government officials. 

A key player in Steinberg's office was his education advisor Susanna Cooper whose husband it turns out is Eric Douglas who owns Leading Resources inc. Leading Resources Inc has a number of public agency clients including the Bureau of State Audits which was doing the audit of the CTC. Cooper is also on the advisory board of WestEd. On May 5, 2010, the morning before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted on the audit request of CTC, Cooper sent an e-mail to Carroll's office e-mail address at CTC essentially sending her the draft of what she would say on behalf of Steinberg at this hearing. Carroll had informed all of Steinberg's staff about the fear of retaliation at the CTC and was shocked that Cooper had sent her this email at CTC since there was a real possibility that her e-mail was being monitored by this time.

After the audit report of CTC was released to the public on April 7, 2011, an oversight hearing took place at the Capitol. Carroll testified at this oversight hearing. As Carroll began to speak about the CTC attorneys looking at teachers they had no right to look at, Assembly member Ricardo Lara cut her off and told her that her time was up. After Carroll spoke, not one assembly person or senator had questions of Carroll about the systemic problems at the Commission despite the extensive material received about the specifics of the backlog and misconduct and the reign of harassment and bullying against CTC employees. 

After the state audit oversight hearing, Executive Director Dale Janssen, Director of the Professional Practices Mary Armstrong and Assistant General Counsel Willard Leroy Pope all quickly left the CTC. Pope also had children on the payroll. Others have also left the agency. Willard Leroy Pope was replaced by attorney/ALJ Michael Barth. Barth was an ALJ for the Office of Administrative hearings, the special education division. Query what type of potential conflicts Barth's employment at CTC might pose. Barth previously worked for the CTC after leaving the employ of the law firm of Rothschild Wishek & Sands. The Rothschild firm has a contract with the California Teachers Association and represents teachers who come up for review by the CTC. Previously after Barth left the Rothschild firm, CTC had some sort of conflict cone set up around Barth. Given the numerous potential liability that conflicts pose for any entity, it is a wonder why CTC could not find a more neutral candidate for the job. Was this act purposeful? Time will tell.

This lawsuit has the potential to expose a lot, including the real possibility of criminal violations, including the conflicts of interest in the drive to shutdown public education and turn this system over to privatizers and billionaire speculators who see this as a growing area for high profits and little costs with no regard to a quality accessible public education system and certainly with no regard to human suffering as numerous people who report illegal acts get severely retaliated against. Economic harm is a powerful weapon and is used and abused too frequently by those in positions of power. 

}:}:}:}_

_{:{:{:{By Steve Zeltzer

lvpsf@igc.org}:}:}:}_

pt2

 Over the last 30 years, a massive coordinated campaign has been funded to undermine public education through charters, trigger laws and pushing testing scores, and - most recently - online education that will eliminate teachers, which will funnel more profits to computer companies and billionaire entrepreneurs, including convicted felon Michael Milken. 

The aim appears to be to make money from turning public education into a profit center for their investments. The Milken institute for example is behind K12 inc. (LRN), the largest U.S. operator of taxpayer-funded online schools and is a publicly traded company with major holdings by Knowledge Universe, owned by felon Milken, his brother Lowell and Larry Ellison, billionaire owner of Oracle in San Francisco.

_{:{:{These billionaires, like Eli Broad with the Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates through their foundation, the Fisher family, which founded the Gap corporation and operates the Kipp Foundation as well as the Walton Foundation, run by the family which owns Wal-Mart, have engaged in a massive coordinated corporate effort to push privatization of education by infiltrating governmental agencies and entities like school districts and placing their corporate operatives throughout the state educational system. In addition, by using the corporate controlled media, they attack public education and blame teachers for the education crisis.

In the mix and supporting this cabal at the California Teacher Credentialing (CTC) was Sacramento based Michelle Rhee and her billionaire funded group "Students First," which organizes and runs pro-privatization school board candidates - shills at boards throughout the country. It received $500,000 as start up money from the Broad Foundation and other billionaires including Arnold Tepper, who is a Democrat and owns Appaloosa Management. Another contributor is John Arnold, a former Enron trader who also gave $35,000 to the Obama Victory Fund in the 2012 election campaign and is who is also seeking to push legislation that will eliminate defined pensions for public school teachers and force them into 401k's run by his investment company. 

According to accounts, Students First, which is a "non profit" 501c(3), will have a budget of over $225 million in 2010-2013. Part of this funding has been used to support reauthorization of "No Child Left Behind," which was also supported by President Obama, Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, and California Democratic Congressional leader George Miller. Rhee's husband Kevin Johnson, who is also mayor of Sacramento and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors also founded his own "non-profit" charter school as part of the St. Hope Academy in Sacramento and also runs the Sacramento High charter. Johnson has been implicated in a corruption scandal with illegal use of Federal funds and sexually harassing employees at the St. Hope Academy and inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor who attended his charter. Johnson is also an active supporter of the Gulen Magnolia Schools, while pushing his own charter schools in Sacramento.

On September 12, 2012, Arnie Duncan as part of his national privatization Department of Education tour came to Sacramento to push the Race To The Top and No Child Left Behind schemes. Duncan also lauded Michelle Rhee and her husband Kevin Johnson at a meeting in Sacramento as part of the U.S. Conference on Mayors, who are pushing for mayoral control of schools, mayoral control of school funding, mayoral control of school districts, and for mayors to be able to appoint school board members. This does not sound very democratic does it? In fact, Michelle Rhee on a recent PBS program can be heard saying to the interviewer: "This is not democracy" after being admonished by the city council for going outside of their instructions. Mayoral control of schools, which New York City has experienced under Bloomberg, appears the ultimate goal of these profiteers, while quashing any opposition from the tax paying public, busting education unions, and other organized workers and creating more charters.

Another supporter of privatization in Sacramento is David W. Gordon who is the Sacramento County Superintendent of Schools. Gordon is also on the WestEd Board of Directors, which pushes Core Standards and further growth of charter schools nationally and is controlled by the billionaire non-profit operations like the Lumina Foundation while WestEd receives funding from public school districts, public community colleges and public universities.

It should be noted that Steinberg was involved in supporting charters and gave $5,000 for privatization shill Gloria Romero from his political fund for Romero to run for State Superintendent of Instruction.

Romero who is now the head of California Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) and also was a spokesperson for anti-labor California Proposition 32 which sought to prevent unions from collecting dues by onerous procedures on their rights. She also was the author while in the legislature of the Parent Trigger Laws in California, which have been used by privatizers to manipulate parents into shutting their public schools and turning them over to charter operations run by privateers.

The funders of the Parent Trigger Laws include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton (WalMart) Foundation. Romero's DFER is funded by Wall Street Hedge fund managers who are making investments into charter schools for use of public funds, while eliminating professional teachers and bringing in Teach For America (TFA) young teachers, who have been used to help destroy public education by undermining the quality of public education in mostly low income minority schools and by de-professionalizing the teaching profession by the elimination of long term skilled teachers. This displacement of senior teachers is a conscious policy of the supporters of privatization, since a profession teacher corp cost approximately 87% of the public education budget. School administrators harass and discriminate against long term skilled fully credentialed teachers who are now being demonized, bullied and retaliated against. This includes even being placed in euphemistic "rubber rooms" in Los Angeles and New York.

In fact, while potential criminal negligence and fraud along with potential misappropriation of public funds has taken place at the CTC Commission, the Brown administration, which is directly in charge of the commission, has not only covered it up, but actually appointed more officials that have financial conflicts of interests with public education including Brown's former Education Secretary Sue Burr. Brown appointed Burr as his education secretary despite the fact that she was executive director for the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association CCSESA. Burr, along with Gary Hart were intimately involved in drafting of the first charter school laws in California. CCSESA has been pushing for more charters and is funded by companies profiting from getting school contracts for online education and pushing more testing and charters. In January of this year, Burr resigned as Brown's Education Secretary and was appointed by him to the State Board of Education. She is also on Edsource board of directors. 

Governor Brown is now demanding that the CSU and UC system implement a massive growth of online education benefiting these same tech profiteers or he will cutback and withhold state funding for these public institutions. Brown's wife, Anne Gust was the former Chief Administrative Officer/general counsel and Executive Vice President of the Gap Corporation. Gap through the Fisher's runs Rocketship schools and a chain of 70 Kipp charter schools throughout the country. On the board are owners of Viacom, Netflix and other billionaires like Mark Nunnelly, who is managing director of Bain Capital Board as well as Carrie Walton Penner who is a trustee for the Walton Family Foundation that owns Walmart. Carrie Walton Penner is also on the board of the California Charter School Association CCSA, EdVoice, and the Alliance For School Choice. The CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, formerly of the State Board of Education is also on the board of Edvoice.

Edvoice is a very powerful political action committee and advocacy group in education policy and was one of the top five campaign contributors in the 2010 general election according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which at the time was investigating Edvoice for their potential improper use of independent expenditures. Eli Broad is also on the board of Directors of Edvoice.

Rocketship Learning had contracted with the lobbing firm, School Innovations and Advocacy (SI&A), whose clients include school districts, K-12 inc- largest online education company in U.S., Orange County Department of Education, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and Santa Clara office of Education. Santa Clara County Office of Education has been approving the expansion of Rocketship Charter Schools in Santa Clara County. Rocket Learning is doing business in California, incorporated in Delaware but physically located in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A parent of one of the students of one of the Kipp Schools -Kipp Hartwood Academy Elementary in Santa Clara- discovered that in order to go to the school board he had to make an appointment to go to the Gap headquarters in San Francisco where the school board met. He was complaining about the clinical abuse his child faced at the school due to the "training" procedures at the Gap funded chain of schools.

California State Attorney Kamala Harris has also refused to respond to a request to investigate numerous potential conflicts of interest with government officials and public education funding that appears to exist throughout the state. The request to Harris was made back in December of 2011. No one from the Attorney General's Office has responded to date. The request was sent certified with return receipt. The request has been confirmed as received.

Of course any investigation would immediately implicate the Governor and other Democratic Party officials in the state who are supporting charters and privatization.

California Democratic party chair John Burton is also on the board of Phoenix University, which has been engaged in defrauding the government and creating a diploma mill with the federal government on the hook for billions in loans to students.

There are too many organizations in the unregulated world of non-profits that are literally taking over our public education system to mention. But, a few other notable organizations involved in the restructuring and de-funding of public education include the Lumina Foundation and ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Commission. ALEC develops legislation such as the trigger laws which further privatization. 

Also WestEd, a government agency through a joint powers agreement receives money both from many public entities such as school districts, CSU, UC and community colleges and private money through foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina. WestEd also received funding from NCS Pearson. WestEd pushes "core standards" and more testing in the schools. It should be noted that Lumina was a funder of ALEC. UC President Mark Yudof is also on the board of directors of Lumina and has pushed privatization at the UC system including online education with tech companies and UC private partnerships using public UC resources for new drugs that will benefit the privateers.

The counsel of WestEd, Leah Williams based in San Francisco refused to provide financial conflict of interest statements saying that the California Fair Practices Commission told them they did not have to provide such material. While the FPPC may not have jurisdiction over WestEd, as WestEd appears not be a quasi government. It does however receive state public education tax dollars and public funds from school and college districts throughout the country. This raises fundamental questions of transparency and where are our public education tax dollars are going? The public has a right to know.

In fact, our public education tax dollars are going to many non-profits, many organizations that produce reports about how bad our public education system is and how things need to be "reformed". These same entities have the most to gain by claiming doom. Doom means things need to change and these greedy tax grabbers are all too willing to be the first in line with their wallets wide open with false promises of the best way to improve education. But we must ask: The best way for whom? Certainly not the best way for students, especially students of low income, special needs students or English language learners. 

It should also be noted that Williams of WestEd has also been appointed to the Western Association of Schools and Colleges WASC, which is the regional accrediting commission for senior high schools, colleges, and universities. The ACCJC which is under WASC, accredits community colleges. ACCJC's director Barbara Beno is demanding the San Francisco City College and other public community colleges either sell off parts of their colleges, fire teachers, cut wages and healthcare for the staff or they will lose their accreditation. This use of WASC and ACCJC, which are private groups, to push for the liquidation of public education is now becoming apparent to tens of thousands of educators and students as the organization goes on a wrecking operation in our public higher education system. Beno is also on the advisory board of Campaign for College Opportunity (another non-profit) with Lumina Board member Frank Alvarez. The privatizers and their influence over public education is a frontal attack on the public education system and any equality in this education system.

B. Teri Burns has been a long time publicly elected school board member of Sacramento County. Until recently, Burns was a lobbyist with School Innovations and Advocacy whose clients include public entities such as Santa Clara County Office of Education and San Juan Unified school district. These school districts or county offices are funding lobbying firms that are engaged in pushing for privatization of education. School Innovations and Advocacy also is a lobbyist for private entities that are stripping tax dollars away from school districts. School Innovations and Advocacy lobbies on behalf of K-12 inc. and Rocketship Learning.

B. Teri Burns is an elected school board member of Natomas Unified in Sacramento County. Natomas Unified is where Ting Sun of CTC fame has her charter academies. Does anyone see a potential conflict yet? Keep looking- it is right in front of you. K-12 Inc; Rocketship Learning; school districts spending money on lobbyists. WestEd also gets public education tax dollars. The question of how much public money is going to lobbyists and these so-called non-profits is yet unanswered but it is extensive? It also raises the question do we really have an education budget crisis or was there money being funneled into the profiteers? It should be noted that all charter schools are non-profit corporations. The real question is whether these corporateers and their media are crying wolf in order to push for the destruction of more public schools.

The incestuous connections and illegal siphoning off of public funds for profit by pubic officials who have interests in these same enterprises appears to be clear criminal conflict of interest and has developed and expanded over decades in California and throughout the country. In the People v. Honig case, former Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bill Honig was convicted of felony conflicts of interest for having an educational non-profit out of his home with his wife. The judge stated what he and his wife were doing was essentially money laundering. Where is Bill Honig today? Jerry Brown rewarded him by trying to have Honig appointed to the State Board of Education. He withdrew his appointment and Honig now works for the California Department of Education. 

If ex-CTC attorney Kathleen Carroll's suit is successful in going forward despite the expected stiff opposition by the powerful corporate interests and politicians who represent them, it has the potential of exposing very corrupt and nefarious connections and actions.

The California Teachers Association CTA/NEA and the California Federation of Teachers CFT/AFT must be aware of these financial conflicts of interests, the corporate connections and the legal violations against teachers, but have to this date refused either to educate their members about these connections or engage in a political education campaign to expose those who are demolishing the public education system. They are also silent about any demand that the State Attorney Kamala Harris investigate and prosecute these systemic financial conflicts of interests. Is it because the unions also have taken money from Gates and other privatizers? The fact that the leadership of the NEA and AFT have taken millions from these billionaire funded foundations and even advertise for their locals to apply for money from these operations raise serious question even about conflicts of interests by the top union officials of these education unions.

A growing number of teachers and education workers are asking where their unions have been as this wrecking operation has escalated? Is Gates using the divide and conquer method to cause dissent within the union by tempting union officials with big bucks? According to Dr. Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of The Great American School System, Gates has given money to NEA. Divide and conquer is a classic union busting technique and it appears to be working within the education unions. The rank and file of education unions around the country are beginning to connect the dots of the attack on education and draw the lessons that these attacks are not only coming from the profiteers but are taking place with the complicity and silence of their union leadership.

The clearest example of this was the invitation to Bill Gates to Address the 2011 AFT convention made by AFT president Randi Weingarten who also happened to be a graduate of the Broad Academy.

For more on the letter sent to Attorney General Kamala Harris see:

http://www.upwa.info/documents/KamalaHarrisRequest.htm}:}:}_

http://www.upwa.info/documents/Carroll-v.-CTC.pdf

www.upwa.info

corbett siphons $

walton:  CS Growth Fund