Progress Conventions Take On New Meaning In Wake Of Police-Related Shootings
Progress Conventions Take On New Meaning In Wake Of Police-Related Shootings
Hundreds of activists, community organizers and progressive elected officials from around the country are meeting in...
Hundreds of activists, community organizers and progressive elected officials from around the country are meeting in Pittsburgh this weekend.
The two conventions, aimed at social and economic progress, will take on new perspectives in the wake of the police shooting deaths of two black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.
Pittsburgh Bureau of Police officials also said Friday that officers will have a heightened awareness of safety in the wake of Thursday night's shooting in Dallas, Texas that killed five police officers and injured seven more.
The Center for Popular Democracy, a national nonprofit that fights for racial equality, worker and immigrant rights, is hosting its first People’s Convention. It’s taking place in Pittsburgh, partly because of the city’s labor roots, location and number of organizations willing to partner, organizers said.
The CPD’s Co-Executive Director Andrew Friedman said attendees are on the front lines of groups demanding higher wages, affordable housing and racial equality. The goal is to build a community of action and share best practices for inciting change.
“I think there’s a huge value in folks realizing they’re not fighting alone,” Friedman said, “and learning about other campaigns in other parts of the country, and sharing strategies that are proving effective.”
Friedman said the Convention will focus on new conversations in light of the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, two black men shot by police this week.
“I think it’s going to have a huge influence, I think folks are coming to the convention with broken hearts and in very low spirits,” Friedman said. “I think folks are in mourning and in shock frankly from these two very painful videos that have surfaced.”
Across the street from the People’s Convention, the annual Local Progress Convening, a gathering of 100 elected officials from across the country, is also taking place this weekend. The convening is another event headed by the CPD, hosted by Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and though separate from the People’s Convention, will have some coinciding events.
“In order to get any change accomplished, you need allies on the inside that are willing and able to move the levers of governmental power,” said Convening Co-Director Ady Barkan. “And you need advocates and community members and organized institutions on the outside pushing for those changes.”
Barkan said representatives from each gathering will speak at one another’s conventions.
Friedman said gun violence and opportunities for the African American community will now have a larger focus on the conference’s agenda. He said attendees include activists who focus on ending police violence in Minneapolis – the site of one of the recent shootings.
One of the conference’s events is a march through Pittsburgh protesting inequality in immigration policies, environmental care and workers’ wages.
Organizers said another stop at the courthouse has been added to the march to honor Black Lives Matter and discuss the week’s news.
By VIRGINIA ALVINO
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Skinny Girl's CEO Bethenny Frankel charters multiple planes to bring supplies to Hurricane Maria survivors
Skinny Girl's CEO Bethenny Frankel charters multiple planes to bring supplies to Hurricane Maria survivors
Bethenny Frankel is turning the full force of her efforts on the disaster in Puerto Rico post Hurricane Maria. As...
Bethenny Frankel is turning the full force of her efforts on the disaster in Puerto Rico post Hurricane Maria. As reported by People, the Skinny Girl CEO, B Strong charity spearhead, mother, and Bravo reality star combined a Twitter crowdfunding campaign with her own resources to raise the money necessary to charter four planes full of water, canned goods, diapers, baby food, medical supplies, and more.
Read the full article here.
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-truth Era Opening Reception to Collect For Change Inauguration
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-truth Era Opening Reception to Collect For Change Inauguration
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-Truth Eramarks the inauguration of Collect For Change-an initiative which...
Object Action: The "F" Word in a Post-Truth Eramarks the inauguration of Collect For Change-an initiative which collaborates with artists across disciplines, offering artwork with a portion of sales benefiting a charity personally selected by each artist. As a feminist response to the one-year anniversary of the current administration, the group exhibition highlights "objects" and works by female artists "objecting" to a dominant paradigm through innovative media in the feminist realm.
Featured artists Ana Teresa Fernández, Chitra Ganesh, Michelle Hartney, Angela Hennessy, Nadja Verena Marcin, Sanaz Mazinani, and Michele Pred will donate a portion of all artwork sales to Art & Abolition, The Center For Popular Democracy's Puerto Rico Rebuilding Fund, Girls Garage, Girls Inc., NARAL Pro-Choice California, Planned Parenthood, and 350.org.
Read the full article here.
California Charter Schools Vulnerable to Fraud, Report Says
The Washington Post - March 24, 2015, by Emma Brown - Journalists, auditors and other investigators have turned up more...
The Washington Post - March 24, 2015, by Emma Brown - Journalists, auditors and other investigators have turned up more than $80 million in charter school fraud in California to date, according to a new report by a coalition of left-leaning organizations, which argues that lax oversight of the state’s charter schools is leaving taxpayer dollars vulnerable to abuse.
California has more than 1,100 charter schools that serve more than a half-million students — far more than any other state in the nation. They receive more than $3 billion in public funds each year. But state and local officials don’t have a rigorous enough system to ferret out misuse of those dollars, according to the report, which says that oversight relies too heavily on audits paid for by charter schools and complaints by whistleblowers.
“Despite the tremendous investment of public dollars and the size of its charter school population, California has failed to implement a system that proactively monitors charters for fraud, waste and mismanagement,” says the report.
It was released Tuesday by the Center for Popular Democracy, an advocacy group that is allied with teachers’ unions and has published several studies of state-level charter-school fraud; the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute, an organization that works on issues including housing and education; and Public Advocates Inc., a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization.
The report recounts some of the charter school scandals that have come to light in California. In 2012, for example, state auditors found that the American Indian Model Charter Schools (AIMS) – an Oakland school that had won national recognition for the achievement of its low-income students — had paid its founder, his wife and their various businesses about $3.8 million. The audit was initiated after a whistleblower raised concerns.
More recently, in 2014, state auditors found that a Los Angeles charter school — the Wisdom Academy of Young Scientists Charter Schools (WAYS) — had made payments totaling $2.6 million to the school’s former executive director and her family members and close associates.
“There simply isn’t enough oversight to prevent a huge amount of fraud in the charter sector, and that’s unacceptable,” said Hilary Hammell, a lawyer for Public Advocates. “That’s unacceptable because it’s vulnerable youths and their families who suffer when money that should be spent on kids at the school level instead goes elsewhere.”
The California Charter Schools Association responded with an extensive statement that called into question the motives of the report’s authors, arguing that they had turned up no evidence of a substantial problem. Many of the examples of fraud cited in the report were old and resulted in charter revocation, overhauls in school management or changes to state law, the association said.
“We agree that inappropriate use of public dollars intended for public school students should be prevented,” the statement says. “We believe that the system that California has very carefully and thoughtfully implemented does just that.”
California school system superintendents who suspect fiscal mismanagement at charter schools can request an “extraordinary audit” from a state agency known as the Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team. But that agency — or some other oversight body — should be auditing all charter schools on a regular basis, according to the report, which argues that absent such a systemic review, misuse of tax dollars is going undetected.
Charter schools are required to submit a number of financial documents to oversight agencies and local school superintendents, including annual audits performed by private auditors. The report’s authors argued that those audits are not designed to catch fraud, while the California Charter Schools Association questioned why charter schools should have to undergo state audits when traditional public school systems do not. “To assume that there is a greater risk at charter schools than school districts, particularly in light of all the real time oversight on financial reports, is simply unfounded,” the association said.
“The report not only provides no evidence of a systemic issue, it does not do justice to the system already in place and that is actually more rigorous for charter schools than for other LEAs in the state (e.g., school districts),” the association said.
Some critics of previous reports about charter-school fraud released by the Center for Popular Democracy have also argued that those reports did not offer equal scrutiny of fraud within traditional public school systems. Others have pointed out that the center counts teachers unions — which have been critical of the charter sector — among its allies and supporters. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is a member of the center’s board.
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Explosion of Gig Economy Means There’s an App for Juggling Jobs
One of the reasons Mustafa Muhammed finally broke down and bought a smartphone was because he needed to find a job....
One of the reasons Mustafa Muhammed finally broke down and bought a smartphone was because he needed to find a job.
The 57-year-old cook was tired of using a library computer to look for work and watching friends get a jump on leads via alerts on their phones. After picking up his first phone about two years ago, he downloaded a mobile app called Snagajob. This summer he landed a gig at a new IHOP opening in Harlem after seeing it pop up in his inbox.
“This is job No. 2,” says Muhammed, who also works in the dining hall at Fordham University. “I wanted to pick up a little something extra for the summer. I don’t like to be lazy.”
Snagajob is one of a slew of apps that have sprung up in recent years to serve the so-called gig economy. This year alone human-resources startups have attracted $1.2 billion in venture capital, with much of the funding going to companies designed to profit from the fluid nature of temporary or contract work, according to research firm CB Insights. In an election year dominated by concerns over economic inequality, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are pledging to generate more full-time jobs. But Silicon Valley is betting the gig economy is here to stay.
“Two or three years ago, it was pretty rare to have more than one job” says Snagajob.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Peter Harrison. “Now it’s really very common. What we are really building our business on is the blurring of the line between snagging a job and snagging a shift.”
Founded in 2000 as an online job board focused on “lightly skilled” hourly work, Snagajob says it has nearly doubled revenue derived from employers in the past three years. It claims 10 million unique monthly users and about 425 employees. In June, the Virginia company unveiled a mobile messaging app that lets employers assign shifts and lets workers trade them.
Snagajob charges employers for the number of clicks, applicants, interviews and hires it lines up. It also sells annual subscriptions for use of its hiring software. Harrison, 53, declines to specify revenue but says Snagajob is breaking even. In February, the startup raised $100 million to develop new features and fund acquisitions. The same month, Snagajob announced a partnership with LinkedIn, which has typically represented salaried professionals, to share research and data on hourly workers.
Similar apps are taking off in Europe, as well. Spain, with a large service sector and 20 percent unemployment, has become a testing ground for startups bringing the simplicity of swipes, geolocation and people-matching algorithms to hourly job recruitment. Three of them -- Job Today, Jobandtalent and CornerJob -- have raised some $87 million combined this year.
Job Today helps restaurants and retail mom-and-pops find and interview waiters, sales associates and drivers. Employers can post as many jobs as they like and have 24 hours to shortlist candidates, after which they use a chat feature to discuss the job and schedule face-to-face interviews. Posting a position on Job Today is gratis for now. Eventually, it plans to sell subscriptions that will let employers browse candidates and post jobs on an unlimited basis. The startup says it has about 100,000 business customers and has processed 15 million job applications since its founding a year ago.
Workforce trends are moving in favor of these apps as more people prefer to choose their own hours. In the U.S., even if they would rather work full-time, government policy has increased the incentive for companies to hire temps and contract workers, Snagajob’s Harrison says. To avoid providing health care as mandated by Obamacare, many businesses deliberately ensure workers toil less than 30 hours a week. They may also prefer temps to avoid paying overtime now that the Obama administration has expanded eligibility to millions more Americans.
According to research from Harvard and Princeton universities, “alternative work arrangements” -- including temp work, on-call work, contractors, and freelancers -- accounted for all the net employment growth in the U.S. from 2005 to 2015. That trend is widely expected to continue.
“These new labor platforms are helping people deal with the volatility of their income and the volatility of work,” says Louis Hyman, a professor of economic history at Cornell University’s ILR School and author of a forthcoming book on the rise of temp work in the U.S. “The tech reflects social reality.” Snagajob’s Harrison says companies are “essentially sharing workers” much the way consumers are sharing car rides and vacation rentals.
A handful of large deals, crowned by Microsoft’s $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, has fueled investor enthusiasm. In June, Monster Worldwide Inc. bought San Francisco-based Jobr, which applies Tinder-like matching algorithms to job hunters and employers. Last month, Tokyo’s Recruit Holdings, which controls top-ranked job search site Indeed Inc., bought Simply Hired, which operates a global network of job search engines.
Of course, not everyone is as enamored of the gig economy as the tech industry. “This glorification of flexibility is not in line with the reality of what most working people really want,” says Carrie Gleason, who runs the Fair Workweek Initiative, a network of activist groups that has pushed for laws to support predictable scheduling and guaranteed hours in low-wage industries. Shift-swapping is “a survival tool,” she says. “It is not the ideal.”
By Polly Mosendz
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Los estados deben ser líderes en la protección de los inmigrantes
Los estados deben ser líderes en la protección de los inmigrantes
Si bien ciertos candidatos a la presidencia han ocupado los titulares con sus indignantes propuestas de deportar a los...
Si bien ciertos candidatos a la presidencia han ocupado los titulares con sus indignantes propuestas de deportar a los inmigrantes indocumentados, el hecho es que los inmigrantes se van a quedar y hacer de Estados Unidos un lugar más próspero.
Dada esa realidad –y la total de inacción a nivel federal respecto a una reforma de inmigración– los estados han comenzado poco a poco a adoptar medidas para tratar a los inmigrantes con dignidad y darles la oportunidad de una vida mejor.
Un estudio reciente de la Fundación RAND concluyó que el número de normas a nivel estatal relativas a la inmigración aumentó diez veces del año 2005 al 2013, y durante el 2015, 46 estados aprobaron 391 leyes relacionadas con inmigración.
Muchas de las leyes alientan a los inmigrantes a salir de la clandestinidad. Por ejemplo, doce estados han adoptado medidas para permitir que los inmigrantes indocumentados obtengan licencia de conducir y 20 estados permiten que los inmigrantes se matriculen como residentes en universidades e instituciones de enseñanza superior del gobierno. Por otro lado, solo tres estados prohíben explícitamente que los inmigrantes indocumentados se inscriban en instituciones de educación superior.
Nueva York ha sido un líder en este frente. En el año 2015, la ciudad de Nueva York se convirtió en la ciudad más grande del país en inaugurar una tarjeta de identidad municipal. Desde entonces, la política ha sido un gran éxito, pues cientos de miles se han inscrito, muchos de ellos inmigrantes que anteriormente no podían abrir una cuenta de banco o siquiera obtener una tarjeta de biblioteca. Ahora se ha reanudado e intensificado la campaña a favor de las licencias de conducir en el estado.
Sin embargo, mientras Nueva York y otros estados avanzan valientemente, algunos estados están dando un paso atrás. Además de políticas a favor de los inmigrantes, el estudio de RAND también reveló que algunos estados están tomando medidas para hacer la vida de los inmigrantes más difícil y peligrosa al redoblar la actividad policial y privar a los inmigrantes de beneficios esenciales.
En esta lista, Arizona es uno de los ejemplos más atroces. A pesar de que se ha criticado mucho al estado por la ley antiinmigrantes del 2010, en meses recientes los legisladores estatales han tomado medidas para hacer que Arizona sea incluso más hostil con sus inmigrantes. La legislatura está promoviendo una serie de medidas legislativas que, entre otras cosas, prohibirían que las ciudades sirvan de santuario y dificultarían solicitar identificación municipal.
No es la única manera en que los legisladores estatales están tratando de restarles poder a las ciudades de Arizona, que tradicionalmente han acogido más a los inmigrantes. Los legisladores también están a punto de aprobar una medida que penaliza a las ciudades por adoptar un salario mínimo más alto o licencias por enfermedad, negándoles fondos para servicios como los departamentos de policía y bomberos.
En efecto, las medidas permitirían que Arizona imponga prácticamente un golpe de estado y haga caso omiso de los deseos de sus propios ciudadanos. No es de sorprender, pues se trata de un estado donde se permitió que fuera necesario hacer fila durante horas en los recintos para las elecciones primarias de los republicanos el mes pasado, negándoles a muchos el fundamental derecho al voto.
Y para que no pensemos que el problema se limita al otro extremo del país, hay señales de peligro aquí mismo. Varios senadores estatales están tratando de prohibir disimuladamente las ciudades santuario en Nueva York al esconder una nueva disposición en el presupuesto estatal, lo que aumenta la probabilidad de que pase desapercibida.
Ya no se pueden tolerar medidas que merman la democracia y perjudican a los inmigrantes. Los estados como Arizona han ayudado a marcar la pauta para las virulentas elecciones contra los inmigrantes de este año. Antes de que se haga incluso más daño, debemos hacer todo lo posible para poner un alto a las medidas contra los inmigrantes.
By Shena Elrington
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The Fed should not raise interest rates until wages go up
Shawn Sebastian, Fed Up Campaign co-director, and Marshall Steinbaum, Roosevelt Institute research director, discuss...
Shawn Sebastian, Fed Up Campaign co-director, and Marshall Steinbaum, Roosevelt Institute research director, discuss agreeing with Trump about the Fed raising interest rates and why wages haven't risen.
Watch the clip here.
Labor Activists Applaud First Statewide ‘Fair Scheduling’ Law
Starting next summer, companies in Oregon will have to give workers at least seven days’ notice about when they’ll have...
Starting next summer, companies in Oregon will have to give workers at least seven days’ notice about when they’ll have to work, according to legislation signed Tuesday by Governor Kate Brown. A handful of major cities have passed “fair scheduling” laws, but Oregon is the first state to do so and the biggest victory on the issue so far for labor activists.
Read the full article here.
Latino Construction Workers Continue to Die on the Job Because of Unsafe Conditions
Fox News Latino - January 16, 2015 - A new analysis of federal safety data found that while overall jobs in the...
Fox News Latino - January 16, 2015 - A new analysis of federal safety data found that while overall jobs in the construction industry are getting safer, Latino workers are still getting injured at alarming rates.
According to the data, between 2010 and 2013, the number of deaths among Latinos in the construction industry rose from 181 to 231. The number of deaths also rose in the industry overall, from 774 to 796, but that increase is attributed entirely to Latinos. During the same period, deaths for non-Latino construction workers fell from 593 to 565.
Each day across the country, hundreds of day laborers and migrant workers wait in street corners waiting to get hired. They are sometimes picked up by contractors or subcontractors looking to cut corners by hiring cheap labor that won’t expect benefits – most undocumented workers live in the shadows and, in general, don’t qualify for any federal benefits.
"There’s a clear correlation between low-wage jobs and unsafe jobs," said Occupational Safety and Health Administration chief David Michaels, according to the Nation. "Workers in low wage jobs are at much greater risk of conditions that will make it impossible for them to live in a healthy way, to earn money for their family, to build middle class lives."
Another reason for the spike in deaths is a rise in safety violations on job sites run by smaller, non-union contractors and an unwillingness by some undocumented workers to report violations, according to a 2013 study by the New York State Trial Lawyers Association.
"Contractors aren’t taking simple steps to protect their workers," Connie Razza, from the Center for Popular Democracy, told the New York Daily News. "They are not providing the training and the safety equipment that are required by law."
Advocacy groups are working to combat any changes to New York’s scaffolding law, which organizations like the Center for Popular Democracy say gives incentive to keep workplaces safe. The law holds owners and contractors who did not follow safety rules fully liable for workplace injuries and deaths.
Contractors argue that it has driven up insurance costs to record levels.
Lawmakers, however, have historically blocked any of the proposed changes to the law.
"All we’re looking for is the ability to have the same right as anybody else would in the American jurisprudence system," said Louis J. Coletti, president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers' Association.
In an attempt to make their work environments safer, some day laborers have joined together to seek protection through collective action. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, some day laborers in New York City turned to one another about the dangerous conditions, and decided together how to deal with them.
The Bay Parkway Community Job Center in Brooklyn brought in safety experts for guidance; community groups and foundations rallied around the laborers, helping them buy their new trailer with several grants.
With the help of organizations such as the Worker’s Justice Project, laborers learned about wage and hour laws, the hazards of exposure to certain building materials and what kinds of actions or treatment by the people who hire them constitute abuse and violations.
"When something isn’t right, at that moment, you may not realize it or attach much significance to it," Rafael Tecpanecatl, a laborer who came from Mexico 11 years ago told Fox News Latino. "I’ve worked many jobs that I realized later were hazardous to my health. I’d get on ladders that were not steady, I’ve sanded walls and cut plywood and had debris go into my eyes and lungs."
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Education Department Releases List of Federally Funded Charter Schools, Though Incomplete
The U.S. Department of Education has released a list of the charter schools that have received federal funding since...
The U.S. Department of Education has released a list of the charter schools that have received federal funding since 2006.
The move comes in the wake of requests by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), dating back to 2014, for public disclosure of who had received federal taxpayer money. CMD had submitted requests for this and related information to the Department and several states.
In October 2015, CMD released its report "Charter School Black Hole: CMD Special Investigation Reveals Huge Info Gap on Charter School Spending," discussing the more than $3.7 billion dollars the federal government had spent on charters and the gaps in what the public could see about which charters received taxpayer money.
Two months later, the Department of Education issued a news release on the subject, titled "A Commitment to Transparency: Learning More about the Charter School Program." The data was released to the public on the eve of Christmas Eve.
According to the Department, "The dataset provides new and more detailed information on the over $1.5 billion that CSP [the Charter School Program] has provided, since 2006, to fund the start-up, replication, and expansion" of charters.
It includes information on which grant program funded each of the charter schools listed and how much. That is more information than the public has ever been given about the true reach of the CSP program into their communities, fueled by federal tax dollars.
It lists more 4,831 charter school with the amounts received in that period, but it does not indicate which of them closed. CMD has sought to assess the number of closed charters using other data as a proxy but ambiguities have impeded that effort.
In its December release, the agency noted that more than half of the charter schools in its list of nearly 5,000 were "operational" as of the last school year with complete data: "CSP planning and startup capital facilitated the creation of over 2,600 charter schools that were operational as of SY 2013-14; approximately 430 charter schools that served students but subsequently closed by SY 2013-14; and approximately 699 'prospective schools.'”
The fate of each of the more than 2,000 charter schools in the difference between 4,831 and 2,600 is not definitively known, although CMD's initial analysis indicates that far more than 430 charters have closed over the past two decades. The agency has not released a complete list of closed charters that received federal funds and how much.
The dataset also does not go back to the beginning of federal charter school funding in 1993, though it does cover the more recent period CMD sought information about. Accordingly, the dataset does not include all the charter schools that received federal tax monies but closed since the inception of the federal charter school program.
The list released in December also did not include the names of "prospective schools" that received federal funds but never opened, which CMD has called "ghost" schools- as with the 25 it found that never opened in Michigan in 2011 and 2012 but that received at least $1,7 million dollars, according to a state expenditure report.
So on January 13, 2016, CMD filed a new set of open records requests with the Department of Education asking that it fill in those gaps and also provide information about communications regarding closed charters and prospective charters.
This is part of a long-term investigation of charter schools that CMD started nearly five years ago.
In 2011, CMD began examining the close relationship between charter school businesses and legislators after a whistleblower provided it with all of the bills secretly voted on through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) where corporate lobbyists vote as equals with lawmakers on bills that are then pushed into law in statehouses across the country.
That award-winning investigation shed new light on an industry that had grown from an "experiment" in 1992 (in Minnesota) into an influential network with a league of federal and state lobbyists seeking increasing redistribution of funds from traditional public schools to other entities under the watchword of "choice."
Over the past nearly five years, CMD has documented the impact of the policies on American school children, despite the PR claims of the industry, which has an increasing number of allies within education agencies who are devoted to charter expansion at the expense of traditional public schools. CMD has written about numerous aspects of the charter school industry as well as corporations, non-profit groups, and policymakers involved in the effort to privatize public schools in numerous ways. CMD has also documented how budget difficulties following the Wall Street meltdown under George W. Bush have been seized on by some in the industry as opportunities to try to displace school boards and local democratic control of schools and spending. CMD has also documented how billionaire funders of ALEC, such as the Koch brothers, have pushed their hostility toward the idea of public schools under the guise of choice.
In 2014, CMD sought to determine how much money the federal government had spent on charters, through State Education Agencies (SEAs) or Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) or other vehicles and discovered that this information was not publicly available. Instead, key data about how Americans' tax dollars were being spent on the charter school experiment and its failures was largely hidden from public view.
When CMD sought the identities of the charter authorizers or CMOs that had been essentially designated via ALEC bills to determine which charters were eligible to receive federal funds, the feds suggested asking the CMOs, even though many of them are private entities not covered by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) rules or state open records laws.
CMD was told to ask NACSA, the National Association of Charter School Associations, a private group created as a result of this new industry, but NACSA also did not maintain a public list of all the charters that had received federal funding and how much each had received.
Additionally, the states through their SEAs - where pro-charter staffers work within state education departments - varied greatly in how much information was provided to the public about which charters had received funds and how that taxpayer money had been spent - despite mounting news accounts of fraud and waste by charters, including numerous criminal indictments, as tallied at more than $200 million by the Center for Popular Democracy.
Under ALEC-style charter bills, charters were exempted from most state regulations including key financial reporting and controls, and a number of charters refused requests by the press under open records laws for such information.
Although some charters were managed by school districts, many were not, and with this deregulation has emerged an array of questionable practices, such as "public" or non-profit charters that outsource their administration to for-profit firms - in addition to the advent of for-profit charters, like K12's "virtual schools," another conduit for redistributing taxpayer dollars through yet another ALEC bill.
When CMD sought information on how much money had even been spent on charters, no one knew. So CMD calculated the figure the federal government has spent fueling the charter school industry and the current tally stands at more than $3.7 billion.
But, that revealing figure did not provide the public with the information it has a right to know about where all that money actually went, as noted in CMD's report "Charter School Black Hole."
So CMD requested information about which charters received such funds and how much.
In releasing the new dataset, the Department of Education is providing new transparency about charter school grantees, although significant gaps remain.
Source: Truthout
7 hours ago
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