Immelt, Obama's man from G.E. stepping down

“Adoption of the Common Core by states was a historic event in education and one we believe will dramatically alter the landscape of education forever,” said Bob Corcoran, president of the GE Foundation."

Jeffery Immelt is the chairman and chief executive of G.E., the largest corporation in the U.S. and a company that rakes in about $15 billion/yr. yet pays not a penny in U.S. taxes. In fact, in 2010 the company actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars while at the same time, wringing millions in wage and benefit concessions from its workers. Pretty slick, huh?

Immelt and Obama

That didn't stop Obama from making Jeffery Immelt, a Republican, his top outside economic adviser as head of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Now that the president has disbanded the Council, Immelt can trot on back to his post at G.E. where he can build more nukes and invest company profits overseas to avoid the IRS.

While the company is glad to get him back in the front office, his two years as part of Team Obama were not without its benefits for Immelt and G.E.. According to the WSJ, in a note to all the members of the council Immelt thanked them for their work and specifically mentioned the fast-tracking (no-bid contracts) key projects and selling more leases for both oil and fracking for natural gas.  GE doubled the number of engineering interns it hires to 3,600 as part of its work on the Jobs Council.

Immelt, with the help of Hillary Clinton, was also able to help G.E. move thousands of jobs to China to help build nuclear reactor parts to export to India (Whew! Hard to keep up.) GE-Hitachi also builds advanced nuclear reactors and wants China First Heavy Industries Group, a state-run Chinese company that is directly involved in Chinese nuclear weapons production, to build major components.

Asked whether he would answer a call from the president in his second term, Mr. Immelt said: “I’d say I’ve had the honor of serving you already, Mr. President.” Adding, “At the end of the day what you really want me doing is selling jet engines.”

What a guy!

What has all this got to do with education?  G.E. under Immelt's direction somehow avoids paying any taxes in this country that might go to support public education and the public school and university training of his company's engineers and scientists. Also, the G.E. Foundation underwrites a lot of corporate-style school "reform" and is one of the main backers of Common Core Standards and testing.

Look who's 'leaning' on pols to cut more out of pensions

THE POWER BEHIND THE PENSION GRAB -- Second from left, R. Eden Martin, past president of the Civic Committee ,Lester Crown, chairman of Henry Crown & Co., and Tyrone Fahner, head of the Civic Committee and former chairman of the management committee at the Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

An editorial in today's Sun-Times unmasks the real power and the face behind the current attacks on the pensions and health care supports for retired teachers and public workers. It's the face of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and its union-hating leader, Ty Fahner.

While the leaders of both parties worry about union opposition to their proposed pension-cutting billls, Sen. Pres. Cullerton is whining about the undue influence Fahner and his boys are having on the legislature as it tries to find a successful route in the current pension grab.

Cullerton, for example, says he can’t get House Minority Leader Tom Cross on board with his favored pension cost-cutting plan because Cross is being on leaned by the Civic Committee, which says the plan doesn’t save enough money. Cross and Republicans, Cullerton said, “are getting pressure from people like Ty Fahner saying: Vote no. . . . You’ve got to save more.” 

The one thing Fahner won't tolerate from either Cullerton or Cross is any talk of a progressive state income tax and an end to the ridiculous tax breaks being given the the state's largest corporations. These two things would go a long way towards saving retiree pensions and solving some of the state's budget problems.

$700 billion K-12 ed market is "ripe for disruption" says Klein

Klein

PW reports:

Asserting that the K-12 education market is “ripe for disruption," Joel Klein, former New York City schools chancellor, now executive v-p at News Corp. and director of Amplify, its education unit, offered a presentation of Amplify’s business model and plans to release hardware and software solutions optimized for a new generation of digitally savvy students and teachers. Klein outlined plans to release an open source tablet device, and specialized teaching software tied to it and to Common Core standards and data analytics, all in an effort to transform the basic model of American education. 

Klein says, "the educational market was worth about $700 billion total, and outlined a $17 billion K-12 market targeted by Amplify."

The language of the Ownership Society

In the Ownership Society, everything is turned upside-down. The new jargon of corporate-style ed reform turns Republican neocons and T-baggers into r-r-r-revolutionaries and democratic educators into "agents of the status quo."

Case in point -- Michelle Rhee, the teacher-bashing, union-hating former D.C. schools boss, is hawking her new book on her StudentsFirst website. The title? "RADICAL". Give me a f#@kn break.

That's right. This adviser to Tea Party govs in Florida and Michigan, now fancies herself as the new Saul Alinsky.

I haven''t read Rhee's book yet. But got this from from Valeria Strauss' review:

… There’s hardly any introspection on Rhee’s part as to why she was so widely unpopular with the District’s African-American parents, the ones whose support was crucial to her success in turning around the city’s schools. Instead, Rhee presents her time as chancellor as a battle between good (herself and Fenty) and evil (unions, other D.C. politicians), in which the evil side won.

There's nothing more un-radical than seeing the masses of predominantly-black voters in your city as "the evil side."

K-12Inc. A sewer of corruption

K-12Inc., the largest and most politically connected of the for-profit on-line learning companies, is at it again. They have been caught up in scandal after scandal, which never seems to keep them from getting lucrative, no-bid contracts with school districts.  The latest horror story emanates from Virginia where dozens of former K-12 employees are claiming that the company uses fraudulent tactics mask the astronomical rates of student turnover within their network of cyber charter schools..

NewsWorks reports that:

The former employees allege that K12-managed schools aggressively recruited children who were ill-suited for the company's model of online education. They say the schools then manipulated enrollment, attendance and performance data to maximize tax-subsidized per-pupil funding.

K12's motivation for manipulating the numbers, according to the suit, was to keep billing traditional public school districts for as many students as possible.
The U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia has denied a request from K12 to dismiss the case. 

A trial could take place this spring.

How Sen. Steans greased the UNO charter deal

Steans

Greg Hinz has a great post on his Crain's blog today. It's all about the $35 million grant given to UNO, operator of a Chicago chain of privately operated charter schools tied into the old Daley political machine and now with connections to Mayor Rahm Emanuel. UNO Board Chairman Juan Rangel  recently served as finance chairman of Emanuel’s mayoral campaign The $35 million is as much as Chicago Public Schools gets for the entire city.

The money came from Springfield, through the back door, as part of an amendment to Sen. Bill 24 introduced by Senator (and billionaire heiress) Heather Steans. She and her sister Robin Steans have been active statewide in promoting privately-run charters, trying to grab the pension fund,  and opposing collective bargaining rights for teachers.

Hinz says Steans "was handling it at the request of somebody upstairs" [read, House Speaker Mike Madigan]. He says he was tipped off to the shady UNO deal by Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE). Good going, Julie W.!

Hinz writes:

 So it goes in our fair capital city. Education money is short, and CPS is talking about shutting schools. But those with friends have their ways. Welcome to the great state of Illinois.

And don't forget the City that Works -- Chicago.

Caterpillar: Why IL Dems go after teacher pensions

Slowpoke Comics

How much do Illinois' largest corporations pay in state income taxes? It's a complex question, but the answer is simple: Nobody knows. Well, almost nobody. The companies know, but they're not telling. Tax collectors know, but they're not allowed to tell. That leaves the rest of us with just one safe guess: as little as legally possible. -- Chicago Tribune

If you're looking for clues as to why a Democratic governor and House Speaker as well as a Dem-controlled legislature in Springfield, continues to go after the teachers pension fund instead of tax revenue from the biggest corporations, look no further than Caterpillar, Inc.

The company, the world’s largest construction-equipment maker, uses its campaign contributions to Democratic politicians like Michael Madigan, Dick Durban, and even Barack Obama when he was a state senator, along with threats to abandon Illinois for southern, right-to-work states like Georgia or move jobs offshore to China to leverage tax breaks.

From the Tribune:

"Cat," made waves last year when CEO Douglas Oberhelman wrote a letter to Gov. Pat Quinn complaining about the recent hike in state tax rates. "I want to stay here," he wrote from Cat's Peoria headquarters. "But as the leader of this business I have to do what's right for Caterpillar when making decisions about where to invest."  And invest it has, building plants in right-to-work states such as North Carolina, Texas and Indiana, typically after securing millions in state and local taxpayer subsidies — as is routine now in a system that pits state against state, city against city, in a race to the bottom for jobs.

The Peoria-based company, which reported year over year earnings growth exceeding 250 percent, is among several U.S. multinationals asking Congress to end U.S. corporate income taxes on profits earned abroad. The company pulls in around $3.7 billion of pretax income on about $42.6 billion in revenue, 68 percent of which came from offshore. Last year, Cat closed its Canadian locomotive plant in London, Ontario, after unionized employees refused to accept a big pay cut. 780 union machinists then went on strike  for four months at the Cat plant in Peoria.

Caterpillar Inc. used offshore subsidiaries in Switzerland and Bermuda to avoid about $2 billion in U.S. taxes from 2000 to 2009, boosting its earnings through a “tax and financial statement fraud,” according to a Caterpillar executive’s lawsuit.

Then on the political side you have Caterpillar Inc. Director Miles White, Chicago's highest paid CEO, who pulls down more than $25 million/year in compensation. He is also a big-wig in the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, the most rabid group when it comes to raiding the teachers pension fund and busting the teachers union.

Since a progressive state income tax appears to be the only viable alternative to cutting the pensions and health care of retirees, we've got to get rid of pols who are tied to corporations like Caterpillar or no change can come.

The up and down sides of privatization

“If what gets measured is what gets managed, then what gets managed is what gets done.” -- From, "The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office," by Fishman and Ellis.

There are instances in which privatization can help achieve broad social goals, writes Eduardo Porter in today's NYT, "When Public Outperforms Private in Services", but while profit is one of the most potent incentives known to man — it also has dangerous drawbacks. Drawing on Fishman & Ellis' analysis of  the transformation of BP from government-run to private as an example, Porter shows privatization's potential for distorted objections and social devastation.

He offers offers of the the consequences of prison privatization along with that of of mortgage banks "blindly offering risky mortgages to shaky borrowers and bundling them into complex bonds to sell to unwary investors." The pursuit of financial rewards, by private companies or even nonprofit organizations, he says, "can directly undermine public policy goals."

There's no better example of course, than the privatization of public education.

Says Porter:

Rewarding teachers for how well their students perform on standard math and reading tests will encourage lots of teaching of reading and math, at the expense of other things an education might provide.

He goes on to quote Northwestern economics professor Burton Weisbrod who says:

“The more we reward those things that we can measure, and not reward the things we care about but don’t measure, the more we will distort behavior.”

Levy's seminar

My brother Fred's blog carries a post which included a self-revealing letter from former N.Y.C. Chancellor Harold Levy for his upcoming private seminar for investors on making money on education. Levy has since become a Wall Street lawyer who now works for Palm Ventures in Greenwich, Conn. He's one of the high rollers in corporate school reform. He's also chairing The Capital Roundtable’s ENCORE full-day conference – Private Equity Investing In For-Profit Education Companies,

Here's some back-story to Fred's post.

It was Levy, in a NYT piece back in 2009, while working for Citigroup, who offered us his "5 ways to fix schools."  At that time, I wrote,

Levy, who obviously hadn't yet discovered the 5 ways while he was still in power, now wants to make it "mandatory" that all kids go to college for a year. I suppose he hopes that will keep them out of the job market and off the unemployment line for a while longer and hopes that the feds will pick up the cost of tuition ($8,000 average for state colleges and $25,000 for private). As for those kids who want to take a year off after high school, to work or travel? I suppose we could arrest their parents. How will this "fix" schools? Maybe Levy will tell us later.

Levy helped funnel $500K of DFER money to Shapton.

I also pointed out in the same post that,

Levy ...helped engineer the back-door shipment of $500K to [Al] Sharpton via hedge-fund school reformers DFER which apparently bought Sharpton's temporary allegiance to the "bedfellows" club at EEP.

At the time, Fred himself, pointed out this back-alley deal on his blog.

 So yes, Mr. Levy certainly has a lot to teach his Ownership Society seminarians about political intrigue, manipulation, and how to make a buck or two off of education.

Thanks Fred for keep this story alive.

Political payback for Walgreens CEO

Rahm & Wasson

As Chicago city retirees brace themselves for another hit on their healthcare plans, corporations like Walgreen's are feeling really healthy.

Back in November, I wrote about the scheme Rahm had cooked up with Walgreens CEO Greg Wasson whereby the mayor would offer parents Walgreens gift cards if they would show up on report card pickup day. Rahm called it, "incentivizing responsible parenting." I call it pay-back for Wasson's political support, particularly for contributing between $500,000 and $1 million to help the city cover expenses for the NATO gathering in May.

And now that the wheels have been greased, here comes some more gift giving -- a no-bid city contract worth about $700,000 to Walgreens so they can  "screen government employees who joined a wellness program to avoid a $50 increase in monthly health insurance premiums."

Rhee: Hire me as a consultant and I will give you at least a 'B+'

Gov Scott and high-prices consultant, Rhee, visit a privately-run charter school in Opa Locka, FL.

In the crazy, mixed-up world of Michelle Rhee, the states with the best performing schools get poor grades while the worst ones  are on the top.

Louisiana and Florida, two of the worst states when it comes to providing support for public education and educating all of its children, got the highest marks on Rhee's so-called "report card." Massachusetts, a strong teacher union state, which usually ranks near the top, is downgraded by Rhee.

A quick glance (which is all this sham report deserves) reveals that top states are the ones that hire Rhee as a consultant and promote her StudentFirst agenda of school privatization, the parent trigger, and union busting. Not much research required there.

Because no self-respecting educator will be fooled into believing that T-Party govs, Bobby Jindal's and Rick Scott's states lead the nation in anything except polluting the Gulf and giving tax breaks for the rich, I will leave the point-by-point debunking to the media, the AFT, or the pros  at NEPC (I'm sure they will get around to it). Suffice to say, that after Rhee's test-cheating debacle in D.C., her credibility rating as an objective grader is somewhere between a D and an F.

In the meantime, here's what the AFT's Carolyn Fiddler has to say:

"The real issue with these report cards is that they fail to measure what matters most to parents, teachers and students. The report cards are silent regarding student achievement, school safety, small class sizes, early childhood education, investments in education, graduation rates or reading instruction."

But aside from that...

Louisiana Voice, a blog covering "graft, lies, and corruption" in JindalVille informs us:

The DOE on Monday "may have thrown a damper on Piyush’s [Jindal's] premature party with its own news release that shows Louisiana not faring so well in high school graduation statistics.  Louisiana, the U.S. DOE said, "is lobbing its own stink bomb, ranked sixth from the bottom in public high school graduation rate.

Also, see Diane Ravitch's post from yesterday, "Rhee: The Mask is off."

J.B. Pritzker: Chicago's busiest venture capitalist

J.B. Pritzker

Here's what the Pritzker's do when they're not busy running the family foundation, "reforming" public education or keeping their minimum-wage Hyatt Hotel workers from unionizing.

Mr. Pritzker's aim isn't ego gratification; it's all about making money, he insists. (Of course, in business the two go hand in hand.) But to move up to the top tier, New World will have to make more, larger investments on the West Coast. At the same time, Mr. Pritzker needs to build the tech cred of Chicago, his adopted hometown, and notch a headline-grabbing cash-out—one that has at least 10 figures—which so far has eluded New World.

Pritzker is a trustee and serves on the investment committee of Northwestern University and is a member of the Board of Governors of Northwestern University School of Law. He's also is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Things get too hot for Melinda at WaPo. She quits the board.

Things are getting so hot over at WaPo's board, what with all these investigations of Kaplan, Inc.going on, that Melinda Gates had to bail, and in a hurry. The Post says, she gave no reason for her quick exodus while a family spokesman said she wanted to spend more time than before working and traveling for the Gates Foundation. That's a load of horse manure.

The power-philanthropist and wife of multi-billionaire Bill Gates, announced Friday that she was resigning immediately from The Post’s board of directors. Her presence on the board apparently created another conflict of interest for the Foundation, which seems to have COFs everywhere.

Melinda's resignation comes on the heels of the release of a report, funded partly by her foundation, which compares for-profit colleges to subprime-mortgage lenders that prey on low-income and minority students. WaPo gets more than half of its revenues from its for-profit higher-education unit, Kaplan, one of world's largest testing companies, which is also a huge player in the for-profit college and lending business. Over the last decade, Kaplan has moved aggressively into for-profit higher education, acquiring 75 small colleges and starting the mega-online Kaplan University.

The report, “Subprime Opportunity,”  authored by the Gates-Funded Education Trust, says that low-income students make up half of the enrollment at for-profit colleges and Blacks, Latinos and American Indians comprise 37 % and that the student-debt loads these students is much higher than at traditional universities.

Power couple Melinda & Bill

But Melinda Gates herself, remains uncritical of Kaplan's policies. She issued a statement saying she's "impressed with The Washington Post Company's work with Kaplan, whose new approaches to education are allowing students opportunities that would otherwise not be possible." Bill Gates’ review of “Change.edu” (Kaplan Publishing) lauds Kaplan, Inc. CEO Andrew Rosen for making “a persuasive case” that traditional colleges are doing a poor job serving non-traditional students. Gates finds Rosen’s “insights truly important.”

This, even though the Post's Kaplan education unit has come under harsh scrutiny with news reports quoting former Kaplan employees who said that they had been instructed to use the Gates name to persuade students to take classes at the company.

A 2010 undercover investigation by the GAO  of 15 for-profit colleges found that recruiters for all of them, including Kaplan, made deceptive statements to prospective students. GAO videotaped a Kaplan recruiter addressing an applicant’s worries about paying back student loans: “I owe $85,000 to the University of Florida. Will I pay it back? Probably not.”

WaPo's board now has 11 members, including Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns about 24 percent of the paper. Buffett is Bill Gates' partner in the giant foundation, contributing more than $30 billion to the enterprise.

Anti-union NLRB ruling confirms that charters aren't public schools

Charter school lobbyists are quick to remind critics that they are still public schools in need of public funding and public support. But when it comes to preventing their teachers from unionizing, they have no problem describing themselves as private entities, free from constraints and laws governing public-sector employees.

Pres. Obama's appointed NLRB has ruled that teachers at a Chicago charter school are now subject to private-sector labor laws, rather than state laws governing public workers.

WBEZ reports:

The ruling made by the National Labor Relations Board last month, said the Chicago Math and Science Academy is a “private entity” and therefore covered under the federal law governing the private sector. The decision overrules a vote taken by teachers last year to form a union in accordance with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. At the time, two-thirds of teachers at the school approved the union and it became official under state law. 

Chicago Math and Science Academy (CMSA) describes itself as a "public charter school". But CMSA, Inc. is actually a private, nonprofit corporation established under the Illinois General Not-for-Profit Corporation Act of 1986 for the purpose of operating a charter school. CMSA's affairs are conducted by a board of directors, which selects its members, and no public officials or government entities are involved in the selection or removal of members of the board of directors.

CMSA is managed by Concept Schools, a private, NFP based in Des Plaines, Illinois connected with something called the Gulen Movement, run and financed by recluse Turkish billionaire guru, Fethullah Gulen.

Illinois charter law already prevents any Chicago teacher from joining the CTU. That's why CMSA teachers weren't allowed to join the strike by their CPS colleagues in September.

The fact is there's nothing public about CMSA other than the funding it gets from Illinois taxpayers. Another good reason for school districts and teachers to oppose that funding and expansion of privately-run charters. 

Charter schools have become huge business for CMOs

"What we are having now is private control of public schools." -- Prof. Gary Miron

Eleanor Chute writes in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ("Charter schools now big business nationwide") about how charter schools have been transformed into huge, often profitable business enterprises since their inception in the early 1990's.

The early charter schools in Pennsylvania were largely the product of passionate parents or community groups, who sometimes planned their dream schools around the kitchen table. But the picture has changed dramatically since the charter school law was passed in Pennsylvania in 1997, with an expansion of education management organizations that bring big money and clout into the picture.

Chute's article has good quotes from corporate-style reform critic, Gary Miron and research data from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. According to their study, private operating companies or Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) will run a majority of the nation's charters "within a couple of years." This, even though the small, independent charters of the early '90's type perform much better than the more costly ones run by CMOs.

Chicago's school-closing consultants

Consultant Avani Patel, left, talks with mayoral adviser Desiree Tate after a school utilization meeting. (Armando L. Sanchez, Chicago Tribune / December 9, 2012)

Byrd-Bennett's rump panel on Chicago school closings may not be paying much attention to the growing revolt in the neighborhoods, but they are listening to a gaggle of high-priced consultants with connections to the mayor.

The Tribune reports:

The commission's hearings are being organized by public relations executive Desiree Tate, a member of Emanuel's "kitchen Cabinet" of African-American advisers who received more than half a million dollars in contracts from Chicago Public Schools before he became mayor. 

Tate claims she is working for free for the commission. Right.

The commission also is being advised by the Civic Consulting Alliance, which has provided free advice to Emanuel since the start of his administration and has links to an organization pushing to replace the traditional neighborhood schools with privately run charters.

The consulting alliance is a pro bono government consulting arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago that has worked with the mayor's office and school officials since the days of Emanuel predecessor Richard M. Daley. But the Commercial Club also founded an organization called New Schools for Chicago, which has the expansion of charter schools as its goal. New Schools President Phyllis Lockett is a former leader of the consulting alliance who still sits on its board; she is credited by New Schools with helping triple the number of charters in Chicago in recent years. The consulting alliance shares a downtown office suite with New Schools.

"New Schools for Chicago and the Civic Consulting Alliance are two distinct and separate organizations, each with their own priorities and governed by their own boards," Lockett said. "New Schools for Chicago is not involved in any way with the Utilization Commission or school actions."

Right.

The CEO of the consulting alliance, Brian Fabes, dismissed any suggestion that his group favors charter schools and said New Schools is not a client. "CTU can make whatever connections they decide they want to make," he said.

Right.

Rauner still ranting against unions

Fred Klonsky drawing.

Republican union-hater and charter school maven, Bruce Rauner is at it again. In a Sun-Times Op-Ed piece, Thursday, Rauner let loose his venom towards labor uniona and collective-bargaining rights and called for turning Illinois into a right-to-work state like Tea Party guvs did in Michigan and Indiana.

Rauner claims that busing the unions will make Illinois a more attractive place for corporate investment. 

"As employers and jobs leave, our tax burden is spread over fewer taxpayers, increasing the costs for all of us who choose to remain in Illinois. The result is a long-term death spiral that can be reversed only by becoming much more attractive to businesses and their investors..."

If it weren't for his money, his close ties with Rahm Emanuel, and his intention to run for governor, Rauner could easily be dismissed as just another right-wing kook. Then again, after saying all that, I'll still dismiss him as such.

Byrd-Bennet's "independent" panel on school closings

Ha!

The news keeps getting worse for Byrd-Bennett's "independent" commission of school closings. First, the Tribune gets hold of a secret CPS document revealing a list of targeted schools in black and Latino communities slated for closing and/or charter-izing. But if the list is already in play, than what's the point of Frank Clark's panel and all the phony public hearings?

Then comes the revelation of Commission head, Clark's contract with the Civic Consulting Alliance.

The Civic Consulting Alliance and New Schools for Chicago share a suite on the 43rd floor of the Chase Building. They also share some board members. Phyllis Lockett, the founding president and CEO of New Schools for Chicago, sits on the Civic Consulting Alliance’s board and used to be CCA’s executive director. The New Schools for Chicago website says Locket has helped triple the number of charter schools in Chicago. -- WBEZ

Clark, the former ComEd CEO, who pulls down over $2 million/year in compensation, has a Chicago charter school, Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy, named after him. And despite having just 44.1 percent of its students meeting or exceeding state standards on the Prairie State Achievement Exam, Clark's namesake school sports the Level 1 badge, having earned the district's highest rating.

He says the school district invited the consulting firm in. But says it should raise no questions of independence. “Their work is impartial, it has a high degree of accuracy, it doesn’t hurt that it’s pro-bono, and I’ve never detected a bias.”

Puhleeze!

Why is Advance Illinois still running corporate reform?

Daley

Bill Daley, writing in Crain's on behalf of his powerful Advance Illinois corporate reform pals, bemoans the state's flat test score performance and lack of college readiness.

The single most reliable indicator of long-term success is whether a child can read proficiently by third or fourth grade. Just 33 percent of all Illinois students, 12 percent of African-American, 18 percent of Latino and 16 percent of low-income students achieve that milestone by the end of fourth grade.

Worse still, these numbers have remained virtually flat for the past decade. And their consequence is clear: Too few students complete post-secondary education, and of those who try, too many require remediation and ultimately drop out.

Daley omits the fact that his brother and former Chicago mayor, Richie, along with this same Advance Illinois gang, have been in charge of the state's reform efforts for the past decade. If there was an ounce of accountability in the state's education system, Advance Illinois would be long gone.

Walton's fueling of charter school operators -- the Mexico connection

A view of Wal-Mart’s distribution center north of Mexico City, in the municipality of Cuautitlán Izcalli.

With a combined fortune of more than $90 billion, the Waltons–the immediate heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton–are the richest family in the world.  Wal-Mart became the nation’s largest private employer and as the Nation's Lisa Featherstone calls them, "a flytrap for much-deserved criticism."

Philanthropy obscures the often unseemly process by which the money was made–and for Wal-Mart that’s at least part of the point.  

The Walton Family Foundation has also become the single largest source of funding for the voucher and charter school movement. But here's something for charter schools running on Walton money to think about. A big chunk of that fortune, hidden for tax purposes inside their foundation, comes from Wal-Mart's corrupt penetration (no pun intended) of Mexico.

An expose in yesterday's NYT reveals:

 Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance — public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals.

Subverting democracy, circumventing regulatory safeguard, lack of transparency -- these sound like essentials for private charter operators applying for Walton money.

TFA rakes in the cash

Diane Ravitch posts:

TFA may be the most effective fund-raising operation in the education sector. Between 2006 and 2010, TFA raised $907 million dollars in gifts from foundations, corporations, and other sources. -- Hats off to TFA

J. Crew...

is selling a $32.50 cotton t-shirt with a giant orange apple on the front to benefit Teach for America. (JCPenney has also supported Teach for America; earlier this year, the retailer asked customers to make donations to the group.) Only x-small and xx-small are available on JCrew.com now, but don’t worry, says: You can always shop the Norma Kamali fashion line with special ties to the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second largest teachers union. -- State Impact

Chicago's version of 'choice'

Excelon CEO John Rowe, former COMED CEO Frank Clark, Senator Dick Durbin, and  Senate Pres. John J. Cullerton, celebrate the grand opening of Excelon Gymnasium on the campus of Rowe-Clark charter school. 

A CPS-promoted school fair featuring "some of Chicago's great public school options, including charter schools," advertised almost no traditional schools -- but still found space for dozens of charter schools with the district's lowest ranking. -- Gapers Block

To Rahm's crew at CPS. a "great" school is any school that bans the teachers union.

CPS announced Friday that  it plans to add four more privately-run charter schools to the nine non-union charters previously approved for the coming year, despite its plan to close more than 100 neighborhood, "underutilized" schools.

"It simply makes their argument, 'We have to close schools,' sound ridiculous," said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education. "It would be one thing if charter schools were vast improvements, but what we know is they're not. Essentially (CPS) is cannibalizing the system to privatize it." -- Chicago Tribune

And why did they pick this corporate reformer to head Rahm's rump group that meets in secret to decide which schools will be closed? Frank Clark is the former chairman and CEO of ComEd who, along with John Rowe, CEO of ComEd’s parent Exelon Corp, operate a charter school named after them. Rowe is also the former chairman of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Isn't it obvious?

Is CREDO really part of the charter in-crowd? You bet.

Chris Cerf claimed CREDO wasn't part of the charter bandwagon. He lied. 

The CREDO study in 2009 found that nationally only 17% of charter schools were outperforming their public counterparts. This, even though CREDO is a group connected with the right-wing, pro-charter Hoover Institute and funded by the likes of  Walton and Pearson. Problem is that facts, as they say, are stubborn fellows.

What followed the study was an attempt to discredit the report led by charter sucks like New Jersey Commissioner Chris Cerf. Recently Cerf claimed said he was "nervous" to have CREDO perform a more recent analysis of New Jersey's charter schools, which was misleadingly reported as being favorable to N.J. charters.  He claimed CREDO was "not part of the bandwagon" and made a point to say that the national CREDO study is often cited by charter opponents.

But Mother Crusader sets him straight.

With all of these connections, can Cerf really say with a straight face that CREDO is NOT part of the bandwagon?  Funded by Walton and Pearson; employees with ties to KIPP and Center for Education Reform; using the services of the reformiest of reformy PR firms; AND partnered with both of the major national charter advocacy organizations on a USDOE funded project.

Nowack departure from Penn Fund raises deeper question

Helen Gym

As I reported last week, Jeremy Nowak is out as president of the William Penn Foundation. But Helen Gym, from the ed activist group Parents United for Public Education in Philadelphia, writes that in light of his abrupt departure, deeper questions emerge about the role the foundation played under his tenure.

On a national level, a number of public education observers and public interest advocates have raised serious concerns about the role of “philanthropic” investments into education reform. From the Broad Foundation to the Waltons and Gates Foundations – what we’re seeing across the country is an unprecedented level of private money shaping public policy under the guise of philanthropy. Too often that agenda has centered around a radical dismantling of public education, increased privatization, and disruptive reform that has sent many districts spiraling into chaos and sustained turmoil.

We have no idea whether our complaint about lobbying had any influence on Mr. Nowak’s departure. Whether or not it did, foundations and “reformers” everywhere need to sit up and look critically at practices that risk substituting private agendas for true public purpose. -- "The new “philanthropy”: private agendas vs. public interest"

Nowak out as Penn Fund chief. 'Differences in approach..."

Nowak

I have posted here several times about the role of the Wm. Penn Foundation and the Boston Consulting Group, two of the main architects of Philly's school privatization plan. Today we learn that Penn Fund power broker Jeremy Nowak is out as the foundations' chief exec. The Penn Foundation has already given $1.45 million directly — and helped obtain at least $1.2 million more — to pay the Boston Consulting Group to develop a so-called “Blueprint” for restructuring the troubled district.

The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that critics are complaining that the foundation’s funding model favors charter schools  at the expense of the rest of the public school system, which may have been a factor in Nowak's departure.

According to The Notebook,

The William Penn Foundation, citing "differences in approach," has announced that it is searching for a new president, and that Jeremy Nowak has left. The foundation's press release says that its leadership and Nowak, who became president in June, 2011, "mutually decided that the time is right for Nowak to transition out of his current role." Nowak guided the foundation through a strategic planning process, but had also become a lightning rod for controversy - especially regarding William Penn's role in paying for the Boston Consulting Group to develop an austerity plan for the School District.

What's so "special" about KIPP?

Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post - Trinity President Patricia McGuire, left, and communications student Yasmeen Newman, 20. Newman attended the KIPP D.C. Key middle school and then the private McLean School in Potomac.

Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet, describes the special status KIPP charters have with several elite colleges and universities who have recently signed "pledges" to track and recruit KIPP grads.

According to the story, 20 colleges and universities, including Georgetown, Brown and Duke universities, have signed pledges to work with KIPP to recruit some of the charter network’s students, 95 percent of whom are black and Latino. KIPP’s Web site says KIPP now has 125 schools in 20 states and Washington D.C., with a total of more than 39,000 students, with more than 85 percent of them from low-income families.

 Wow! That is special, at least for those students KIPP usually doesn't enroll, like those with disabilities or special-needs, English-language learners and for those whose test scores make them unlikely survive KIPP's high attrition rate. KIPP has forged a "national brand", writes WaPo ed writer, Nick Anderson,  by offering longer school days and years and a credo advocates sum up as “work hard, be nice.” The network says it takes “no shortcuts” in pursuing academic goals and makes “no excuses” for failure. They also receive hundred of millions of dollars in private funding.

I wish every high school would at least make the effort or have the resources to connect its graduating students with some type of post-secondary ed opportunities. I also wish most large urban high schools had manageable student/counselor rations, ie. below 1:400, so that inner-city students could  learn about possibilities beyond high school or even how and when to apply and connect with funding and decent loan opportunities.  More importantly, I wish that the cost of a university education was even close to being affordable for most working class and middle-class families.

But obviously, such a wish list for public education is of no concern to KIPP. After all, writes Strauss,

Over at Brown University, according to this story in the Providence Journal, the KIPP scholarships were endowed with $2.5 million from Martha and Bruce Karsh, the parents of a Brown student. Incidentally, Martha Karsh is founder of the Karsh Family Foundation and happens to be on the board of directors of KIPP... KIPP’s Board of Directors includes corporate executives, such as Philippe Dauman, president and CEO of Viacom, Inc; Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, Inc.; and Mark Nunnelly, Bain Capital’s managing director. Meanwhile, KIPP L.A.’s Board of Directors includes Marc Castellani, executive director of JP Morgan Private Bank, and KIPP D.C.’s Board of Directors includes Don Graham, CEO of The Washington Post Company. 

Calling KIPP charters, "public schools" is at best, a stretch. More like an absurdity.

Philly schools have to go begging to Wall Street

Chief Recovery Officer Thomas Knudsen is resigning. He ran the show in Philly. Former head of former head of Philadelphia Gas Works, his loot-and-burn job was to cut $100 million or more from the school budget while protecting high-paid consultants and execs.

According to the Daily News, Philly's school district is "broke" and forced to go begging to Wall Street for a $300 million loan to pay its bills. But this hasn't stopped them from giving fat raises to non-union administrators and consultants while asking union teachers for give-backs. 

"Union leaders were surprised by the news."

 What?

"It seems immoral to me," said George Ricchezza, 1201 District Leader for 32BJ SEIU. The union agreed this summer to forgo raises for four years and contribute $100 million back to the district.

"If I would have known prior [about the raises], I would have had a more intense conversation about it so I could absorb the thinking of the district," Ricchezza said of a meeting he had with Hite last week. "It's going to be difficult for our members to understand this."

You bet it will. 

Also, check out Boston Consulting Group's role here.

Stand for Children spreads $$$ around in Washington State

Ken Libby reports that the corporate "reform" group, Stand For Children, spent $750,000 in a mostly losing cause, to support anti-public school, anti-union candidates in local elections. But their influence peddling wasn't a complete bust since it appears that Initiative 1240, which would allow charter schools in the state and a clear favorite of Stand, appears to have passed by a slim margin.

K12 Inc. stock sinking like a stone

The king of the privatized virtual learning world, K12Inc. has investors checking to see if they're still wearing their shorts. The problem continues to be extravagant costs stemming from huge salaries paid to top execs, plus K12 students scoring behind kids in brick-and-mortar schools.

Market Watch reports:  K12 Inc.'s fiscal first-quarter profit slipped 5.3% as the online education provider saw a double-digit revenue increase weighed down by a continued rise in costs.The stock has fallen 42% in the past 12 months. In the latest period, instructional expenses were up 17%, and selling, general and administrative expenses rose 15%.

Med student killed as police fire on anti-privatization protest in D.R.

Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) demonstrators place fellow student Wilfredo Florian into a shopping cart after he was shot by riot police in Santo Domingo   (REUTERS/Ricardo Rojas) 

Police opened fire on an anti-privatization protest in the Dominican Republic, killing 21-year old medical student, William Florian Ramírez — who was not taking part in the protest.  NYT reports that violence erupted during a confrontation between the police and protesters angry about a new austerity law that will significantly raise sales taxes and privatize the the country's public university.

Billionaire Lucas -- the new power philanthropist in education

Not sure about this. But does this mean that George Lucas pays no taxes on the sale of his film company to Disney? The "Star Wars" director will reportedly "donate" the $4.05 billion he will receive from the sale of Lucasfilm Ltd. to Disney to his own Edutopia foundation. Like Bill Gates, who left his post atop Microsoft to run his $30 billion foundation, Lucas will now make the world of education reform his own. 

“I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future –- and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt – as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so.”

So far, Edutopia has been more humane than Gates' own power philanthropy. But we'll see.  

Virtual learning from K12 Inc.

Billionaires jump into Louisiana school board race. Why?

An  article in the Oct. 17 Nation by  Matthew Cunningham-Cook, asks the question, "Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?"

As Naomi Klein detailed in The Shock Doctrine, post-Katrina New Orleans has been Ground Zero for efforts to privatize schools and weaken teacher unions—hallmarks of education reform. After the hurricane, the vast majority of New Orleans public schools were taken over by the states’ Recovery School District—the district that was subsequently headed by John White. Nearly all of the city’s 7,500 public school employees were fired, although a few were later rehired. The post-Katrina shock also saw the advent of a limited voucher program and a massive expansion of charter schools, many of them for-profit. Education Secretary Arne Duncan actually said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” and Michael Bloomberg repeated this position almost verbatim in a profile in Fast Company in 2011. And yet, the Recovery School District received a “D” on the state’s evaluation system in 2011, making it the second-lowest-performing district in the state.

The article takes note of the estimated 2,000 teachers who rallied against Gov. Jindal's "reform"  bill on March 14, but were not let into the committee room. It also mentions Karran Harper Royal, a leading activist who is a mother of a child with disabilities and who's running as a progressive candidate for the board. I met Karran last August at the SOS Convention and was impressed by her obvious leadership qualities. She is active in Parents Across America and deserves our support for her campaign.

Sarah Silverman: Corporations are people

But are people people?

Consulting companies the bane of public space, schools...

BSG

Daniel Denvir has a great post over at The Atlantic Cities blog, "As Local Governments Shrink, Private Consultants Reap Rewards."

Denvir describes the trend of supplanting public space and decision making with corporate consulting companies. One of the main proponents of this strategy is Mitt Romney, who started in business with the Boston Consulting Company. After leaving BCG, Mitt Romney went on to work at Bain and Company consultants, from where he launched the controversial private-equity firm Bain Capital. For decades, consulting has been a top choice for MBA graduates like Romney.

In 2010, the Gates Foundation gave 15 cash-desperate states $250,000 to hire consultants to write applications for Obama's Race to the Top competitive education grant. The grants, which encourage districts to tie teacher evaluations to standardized tests and loosen restrictions on charter schools, draws heavily from the corporate-education reform model funded by the big three foundations.

Denvir writes,

Consultants, like Romney, have the appeal of "real-world" experience which, in early 21st-century America, means experience in the hard-nosed competitive marketplace outside of the public sector's one-time easy comfort. Since August 2008, the number of public employees has already been cut by 662,000 nationwide. Consultants draw on experience from a private sector that has relentlessly slashed employment, broken unions and outsourced work for decades.

 Consultants often recommend privatizing services like education and slashing public employee workforces, though sometimes governments might just be looking for outside expertise to validate decisions that have already been made.

 In Philadelphia, the $2 billion William Penn Foundation paid the bill for a Boston Consulting Group plan to restructure the city's fiscally-distraught (and state-government run) public schools in the wake of massive state budget cuts. The resulting "Blueprint" proposed a radical overhaul that would dismantle the central office and potentially transfer school-level management to private charter school organizations. 

Daniel Denvir is a staff reporter at Philadelphia City Paper and a frequent contributor to Salon and The Atlantic Cities.

Goldman Sachs exec exposes rip-off of Teacher Retirement Fund

Wall St. (N.Y. Times)

Greg Smith's book, "Why I Left Goldman Sachs," is being released Monday. It's a window into the culture of Wall Street and a company that routinely ripped-off clients, including teacher retirement funds. Smith was so disgusted with his firm, Goldman Sachs, that he quit via an open letter in the New York Times  in which he says:

"It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail."

The term refers to clients, including teacher retirement fund managers, who were easily persuaded to invest fund dollars into poor performing stocks the Wall Street-ers where anxious to dump. The funds lost millions and now teachers are being forced to pay the price with cuts in their hard earned benefits.

In an interview on CBS News' 60 Minutes on Sunday to promote the release of his book Smith says:

"What Wall Street will do is they will approach one of these philanthropies or endowments or teachers' retirement pension funds in Alabama or Virginia or Oregon and they'll say to them: 'We have this great product that is going to serve your needs'. And it looks very alluring to these investors but what they don't realise is that upfront they are immediately paying the bank $2m or $3m because of their lack of sophistication."

Gates axes its L.A. front group

The Gates Foundation, has pulled the rug out from under it's national group formed to push for favored "reforms," including  teacher evaluations based on standardized testing.

Communities for Teaching Excellence, headed by former L.A. school board member Yolie Flores, is planning to close its doors next month. Although based in Los Angeles, the group had a presence in Hillsborough County, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; and in Pittsburgh — all locations where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the development of new teacher-evaluation systems.

Communities for Teaching Excellence was not hitting its marks in terms of generating press coverage and building community coalitions, said Amy Wilkins, chairwoman of the board of directors.

Best quote from Wilkins:

"Gates was such a big part of the funding. That made some of the partners and other funders nervous. How do you look like an independent actor? You have to show broad public support so you're not seen as a phony-baloney front for Gates. People criticized the organization for that and they didn't move closer to shaking that label."

We don't need no stinking approval -- we've got Gates $$

The Sun-Times reports that two private charter school operators are planning to open schools in Chicago even though they have yet to be vetted by CPS. Why are the owners of Foundations College Prep and Intrinsic Schools they so sure that board approval is coming -- even while CPS is supposed to be downsizing? Simple. They have Gates money behind them and in Rahm's world, money can buy you as many charters as you want, regardless of your track record or the needs of the community.

 “We have not approved any new charters, and don’t plan to discuss until that process is complete,” says CPS liar-in-chief Becky Carroll, winking at the two charter operators. 

Writes S-T reporter Lauren Fitzpatrick:

 How CPS can be promising in its Call for Quality Schools plan to open more charters while downsizing its buildings is something some 30 aldermen have questioned, demanding the City Council Education Committee hold a public hearing to explore. CPS officials have said they’ll be “right-sizing” the district that has 200,000 fewer children than seats.

Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), who drafted a resolution, said Wednesday that a hearing is planned but not yet scheduled. “Movement toward charter schools without any reflective approach and analysis is just wrong,” he said.

Foundations College Prep founder Micki O’Neil, is a former investment banker (just what our kids need) who knows damn well her schools will be approved by the School Board.

Zaikos has MBA from Harvard

Intrinsic was founded by Melissa Zaikos, a Harvard business school grad and former Deloitte management consultant, and a graduate of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. As far as I can tell, Zaidos has never operated a school before and Intrinsic has no track record. So what is Gates funding exactly?

Illinois Network of Charter Schools hustler-in-chief, Andrew Broy claims he doesn't know who’d been recommended for a new charter (no one, Andrew, according to Becky Carroll)  but says  that a foundation wouldn’t likely hand out money to just anyone.

No question that O'Neil and Zaikos are not "just anyone."

"They've positioned themselves as 'reformers'"

Cheryl Scott Williams, executive director of the Learning First Alliance, takes on the corporate reformers with a strong EdWeek commentary, "School Reform, But From Whose Perspective?"

Writes Williams:

Prominent national leaders from government, corporations, and philanthropic organizations, having positioned themselves as "reformers," hold the bully pulpit in not only proclaiming education professionals as inadequate in ability and practice, but also in controlling access to significant resources to define and support reform efforts... 

...In the end, we're all responsible for building and sustaining the best educational experience possible for all our children. To the extent we continue to polarize the debate, with privileged powerbrokers dictating investments and practices designed to circumvent the professionals now working in the field, we're doomed to failure. 

Who's behind Washington state charter initiative? Who do you think?

Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton gave  $1.7M. (Mug Shot)

Washington voters have rejected the opening of public charter schools three times — in 1996, 2000 and 2004 — but this time around, big money is pouring in on the side of privately-run charter schools.

Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet posts:
To get an understanding of how America’s wealthiest people are using some of their fortunes to drive school reform, take a look at a list of the contributors to the pro-charter school initiative on the Washington state ballot in November. The first few pages — the ones with the biggest donations — is a who’s who of billionaires.

This all helps illustrate what education historian Diane Ravitch referred to as “the billionaire boy’s club” (which apparently has expanded to include females) in her  bestselling book, “The Life and Death of the Great American School System,” and her in subsequent writings. In this post, she wrote:

“Today, the question of democracy looms large as we see increasing efforts to privatize the control of public schools. There is an even more worrisome and allied trend, and that is the growing influence of money in education politics at the state and local levels.”

Friedman's market theory doesn't work

The Answer Sheet also carried a post worth reading by Marc Tucker, president of the non-profit National Center on Education and the Economy, called "Why the ‘market theory’ of education reform doesn’t work."

Writes Tucker:

The theory doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in theory (because most parents don’t place academic performance at the top of their list of things they are looking for in a school) and it doesn’t work in practice, either.  How do we know that?  Because, when we look at large-scale studies of the academic performance of charter schools versus regular public schools, taking into account the background of the students served, the results come out within a few points of each other, conferring a decisive advantage on neither.  It is certainly true that some charter schools greatly outperform the average regular public school, but it is also true that some regular public schools greatly outperform the average charter school.