Corbett Frees $45M Philly School Funds He Held Hostage

Another replay another city school closes because no schools helps children.

The Kaplan Teachers

Parent Trigger - False Promises, Divided Communities and Disrupted Young...

The move to subvert funds from the public.

Truthout Interviews Featuring Candice Bernd

The chart for the Common Core.

Chicago School Board Member Benefits From District Budget Cut

Chicago School Board Member Benefits From District Budget Cut:

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Penny Pritzker (Hyatt Hotel and backer of Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel) part of the gold rush of education that is out there for real movers and shakers

School board member Penny Pritzker’s Hyatt Hotels Corp. is benefiting from a $5.2 million [tax increment financing] TIF subsidy on 53rd Street – while [Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS’s)] proposed 2013 budget cuts seven schools surrounding the hotel project by $3.4 million, which is roughly the portion CPS is losing from the TIF deal.

“This one example shows the fundamental corruption in the way things are done here,” said David Orlikoff of the Chicago Teachers Solidarity Campaign, a labor and community coalition growing out of Occupy Chicago’s labor committee and supporting the Chicago Teachers Union.

CTSC will hold a press conference and speakout and picket the project at 53rd and Harper on Wednesday, August 8, starting at 5:30 p.m.

“As a member of the Board of Education, it’s Penny Pritzker’s job to find money for our schools, not to take our money for her business,” Orlikoff said.

The $5.2 million subsidy is part of $20.4 million in TIF funds going to the University of Chicago-led redevelopment of Harper Court (see here for some background).  In addition to the hotel, the university is building a 12-story office building in the first phase of the project.

CTSC points out that Pritzker has a net worth of $1.8 billion, and the University of Chicago – now engaged in a huge campus expansion – has an endowment of $6.6 billion.

“They have plenty of money,” said Lorraine Chavez of CTSC.  “They don’t need a taxpayer subsidy to pay for it.  It’s outrageous.”

At Catalyst, Penny Pritzker clarifies that she’s not personally receiving the $5.2 million, and in a statement to Newstips, Hyatt points out that the Hyde Park Hyatt will not be owned by the corporation but, like many Hyatts, operated under a franchise agreement, thus “neither Hyatt Hotels Corporation nor Penny Pritzker…is receiving TIF funds as a result of this project.”

Conflict of interest

“The school board should be defending school funding when the mayor wants to take it for TIFs; it’s the only body in a position to do that,” Orlikoff said.  “But they’re appointed by the mayor, and they look the other way.

“Then they tell teachers they don’t have any money for anything, except the mayor’s pet projects.  It’s a conflict of interest – and it will be a conflict until the school board is elected.

“We need representation on the school board, and we need to end the chronic underfunding of our schools,” Orlikoff said.

CTSC, which exists “to support teachers and fight for equitable quality education,”calls for increasing school funding “by reclaiming TIFs and taxing the rich.”

TIF is “a failed program,” Orlikoff said.  “It’s not fighting economic blight, it’s a way of taking from everyone and giving to the One Percent.”

Questions on 53rd Street

There are lots of questions right now about the 53rd Street TIF, especially with a new TIF district now being carved out of it by a second developer.

Antheus Capital, planning an upscale residential and retail development at 51st and Lake Park, wants to break its parcel out of the 53rd Street TIF to form its own TIF district –  in order apply for $10 million or more in TIF funds.  The 53rd Street TIF advisory council has okayed the proposal.

But after ten years of operation, the 53rd Street TIF fund has a balance of just $3.7 million.

Now, with thirteen years to go, it’s on the hook for a $20-million subsidy, whilerevenues are slowing (due not just to a lousy economy but to the County Assessor’s new formula, which shifts the property tax burden from commercial to residential taxpayers) – and the TIF district is getting smaller.

“Many of us don’t expect to seek Phase 2″ ( a 26-story condo tower and four apartment buildings, estimated to cost $100 million), said longtime  community activist George Rumsey.  “It’s hard to see where the money’s going to come from . Everyone is wondering if there’s going to be enough to finish the first phase.”

“For two years I’ve been asking who is liable if the TIF funds come up short,” he said Rumsey.  “I have not gotten an answer.”

Fourth Ward Ald. Will Burns has backed Hyatt’s TIF subsidy, telling the Sun Times it’s “absolutely essential,” though the Ramada Lakeshore hotel is located a few blocks away.

Time to ‘revisit’ TIF?

The Hyde Park Herald called for “revisiting” the 53rd Street TIF in an editorial last week.  It points out that the TIF district was sold to residents in 2001 on the basis of promised community benefits, including a new addition for Canter Middle School and a parking lot, none of which have materialized.

The stated purpose of the 2001 TIF was to provide support for schools and parks and increase parking, Rumsey said.  
In fact a city parking lot at 53rd and Lake Park is being gobbled up by the Harper Court project
. The development now under construction includes two floors of parking.

“The one concrete advantage” for the community, a program which hired ex-offenders for street beautification, was cancelled, supposedly due to inadequate funds, the Herald points out.

“There is little evidence at this point that this TIF will do much more than TIFs have done in other parts of the city, namely grease the wheels of development,” according to the Herald.

And given reaction to the Antheus proposal, “it appears that the neighborhood is not any more enthusiastic about supporting private development with public money than it was when the TIF was first brought up in the ’90s.”

Hyatt under pressure

Meanwhile, Hyatt Hotel Corp. has problems of its own.  Major organizations including the AFL-CIO and the National Organization for Women have signed on to a global boycott of Hyatt hotels to protest the company’s outsourcing of union jobs to agencies that pay minimum wage and its refusal to adjust workloads – or even provide mops with long handles — to reduce injuries.

In Chicago, while other hotels have negotiated over limits on subcontracting and safer working conditions, Hyatt has refused to do so, according to press releases from UNITE-HERE, which represents hotel workers.

In May, OSHA issued an unprecedent letter to Hyatt calling on the company to take steps to reduce the risk of injury (h/t 1537 News).  OSHA has issued 21 citations against Hyatt and its subcontractors.

Staffing reductions and an “amenities race” has increased the risk of permanent, disabling injuries for housekeepers, according to a 2006 study by the union.  A 2010 study found Hyatt workers had the highest rate of injuries of hotel chains studied; Hyatt’s injury rate was twice as high as the best-performing chain in the study.

Hyatt housekeepers’ workload is double the industry standard, according to the union.

“Hyatt’s workplace environment is being characterized inaccurately by union leadership as part of tis ongoing campaign to pressure Hyatt associates to join their union in non-union locations,” said Katie Rackoff, Hyatt’s director of corporate communications, in an email which cited Hyatt’s “outstanding safety record.”

At the end of the month, Hyatt workers in Chicago will have been working for three years without a contract.

The Pritzker family took the Hyatt Cororation public in 2009 but retained control with a separate class of shares that have ten times the voting power of common stockholders.  Penny Pritzker sits on Hyatt’s board, which is chaired by her cousin, Thomas Pritzker.  The family’s total worth is estimated at $20 billion.

In the 1990s, Penny Pritzker chaired the board of Superior Bank as it plunged into the subprime market (the bank later collapsed); recently she established a private equity firm to invest in distressed properties.  (More here.)

She’s a major donor to Mayor Emanuel’s campaign fund and to Stand For Children, which pushed anti-union legislation in Springfield.

Originally Posted: http://truth-out.org/news/item/10851-chicago-school-board-member-benefits-from-district-budget-cut

80% of Michigan Charter Schools are For-Profits - Forbes

80% of Michigan Charter Schools are For-Profits - Forbes:

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Dr. Gary Miron of Western Michigan University recently testified before the Michigan State House that school reformers have “gone away from those original charter ideas to the point that they should probably be called ‘corporate’ schools or ‘franchise’ schools instead. I like charter schools. I like the notion of charter schools. But what we’re talking about now is something that is very different. We need to go back to the original intent and goals.”

Earlier this year, Dr. Miron testified [pdf] before the US House of Representatives, stating:

Charter schools have provided an easy route for privatization; many states allow private schools to convert to public charter schools, and increasing the use of private education management organizations is increasingly being seen as the mode for expanding charter schools.

Today, one-third of the nation’s charter schools are being operated by private education management organizations (EMOs) and this proportion is growing rapidly each year. In states such as Michigan, close to 80% of charter schools are operated by private for-profit EMOs.

Four out of five charter schools in Michigan are run by for-profit corporations. Let that sink in a minute. This should be deeply, deeply troubling for anyone thinking about their child’s future education, or the future of this country.

We’ve had years to examine for-profit education results at the higher education level. Companies like University of Phoenix and others cost taxpayers money, provide subpar education, serve as diploma mills, and prey on students who may never be able to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars in student loans they take on. They even prey on military veterans and active-duty service members.

We should be terrified of this happening to our public schools. Yet here it is happening nonetheless, all across the country. The corporate takeover of public education is underway, though its origins may be in the good intentions of people like Dr. Miron and the well-meaning efforts of school reformers to improve the education prospects of our children.

full article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/09/29/80-of-michigan-charter-schools-are-for-profits/

cheating chancellor Michelle Rhee talks how to fix education, the economy and anything else they care to ask on Meet the GE Press

Growing National Movement Against "High Stakes" Public School Testing

Mayor Michael Nutter hold Press Conference in protest of Mitt Romney's v...

You can certainly tell when Walmart puts big money into education they probably want their fellow Americans to have high paying, well insured jobs

Daily Kos :: News Community Action:

The jobs are so highly sought that some senior citizens are giving up their jobs to take the highly paid greeter job

"The faces that dominate the education reform debate today—where "education reform" means increased reliance on standardized tests, the results of which are then used to determine the fates of teachers whose job security has been weakened—are people like former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and Harlem Children's Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada. They are, or can be packaged as, dynamic and visionary, educators who are passionate about kids. But lots of teachers could fit that bill, so why is someone like Michelle Rhee, who has spent very little time in the classroom, so prominent while the average teacher faces cutbacks and scapegoating? The answer, as in so many things, involves money. Not just any money. Billionaire money. Hedge fund money. Goldman Sachs money. Bill Gates money and Walton money. Michelle Rhee and Geoffrey Canada are prominent because they embody a set of ideas attractive to major philanthropists working to remake public education into their own vision of how the world works.

"

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The attack on schools Philadelphia style: Dozens of Philadelphia Public Schools on Chopping Block

Corporate Public Education on steroids is coming to Massachusetts: Citizens for Public Schools

The ALEC -- Teach for America Connection

The ALEC -- Teach for America Connection

Last summer, quite by accident, I met a group of about six young adults on the MAX here in Portland who were traveling from the airport to train for their new jobs.  They were talking about having just finished their teaching jobs and how happy they were to be done with it. Being an unemployed teacher myself,  I listened for a while and then struck up a conversation.  They identified themselves as Teach for America corps members who had just completed their obligatory two year stints in the classroom.  They were headed to the Stand for Children offices to be trained in writing education policy.  Most had been hired to work as legislative assistants in state houses around the country. I asked a few probing questions about their education expertise, especially in policy.  Turns our none of them had any education credentials.  Some had worked on their masters degrees during teaching, but none had studied education or education policy.  They really didn't get my point. The arrogance was palpable.  I finally asked one of them point blank, "Don't you think you should have some education and experience before writing education policy?" They assured me that over the next two weeks (I think, anyway, short time) they would be trained to do it.

I hadn't thought about that encounter much since. But when I read Diane Ravitch's latest article in the Answer Sheet, Ravitch: A Primer on the Group Driving School Reform,  it occurred to me that Stand for Children could be the conduit to the uniformity in education legislation using Teach for America "leaders" as the delivery system. Last summer ALEC was barely a blip on my radar so I hadn't make a connection back then.

Could Stand for Children be training former Teach for America corps members to write ALEC policy for state legislatures? I know Oregon legislators aren't savvy enough to develop language and coordinate ideas that mesh with those in other states, but their Teach for America, Stand for Children trained assistants may well be.  With a little help from a persistent friend, this is what I found out.

The ED Show - Teachers under fire

LP - One of the last businesses you can making money off of is raiding the public treasury and muscling out the kids for the public dollars.

This also could be called the looting of America the education edition: How to Destroy Education While Making a Trillion Dollars | Common Dreams

How to Destroy Education While Making a Trillion Dollars | Common Dreams:

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The U.S is ratcheting up a societal-level war on public education. At issue is whether we are going to make it better — build it into something estimable, a social asset that undergirds a noble and prosperous society — or whether we’re going to tear it down so that private investors can get their hands on the almost $1 trillion we spend on it every year. The tear-it-down option is the civilian equivalent of Ben Tre, but on a vastly larger scale and with incomparably greater stakes: we must destroy public education in order to save it. It’s still early in the game, but right now the momentum is with the wreckers because that’s where the money is. Whether they succeed or not will be up to you.

Here’s a three-step recipe for how to destroy education. It maps perfectly to how to make a prodigious profit by privatizing it. It is the essential game plan of the big money boys.

First, lower the costs so you can jack up the profits. Since the overwhelming cost in education is the salaries of the teachers, this means firing the experienced teachers, for they are the most expensive. Replace them with “teachers” who are young, inexperienced, and inexpensive. Better yet, waive requirements that they have to have any training, that is to say, that they be credentialed. That way, you can get the absolute cheapest workers available. Roll them over frequently so they don’t develop any expectation that they’ll ever make a career out of it.

Second, make the curriculum as narrow, rote, and regimented as you can. This makes it possible for low-skilled “teachers” to “teach.” All they need do is maintain order while drilling students in mindless memorization and robotic repetition. By all means avoid messy things like context, nuance, values, complexity, reflection, depth, ambiguity—all the things that actually make for true intelligence. It’s too hard to teach those things and, besides, you need intelligent, experienced people to be able to do it. Stick with the model: Profitable equals simplistic and formulaic. Go with it.

Finally, rinse and repeat five thousand times. Proliferate franchised, chartered McSchools with each classroom in each McSchool teaching the same thing on the same day in exactly the same way. So, for the math lesson on the formula of a line, you only need develop it once. But you download it in Power Point on the assigned day so the room monitors, i.e., the “teachers,” know what bullets to read. Now repeat this for every lesson in every course in every school, every day. In biology, chemistry, geometry, history, English, Spanish, indeed, all of a K-12 curriculum. Develop the lesson literally once, but distribute and reuse it thousands of times with low-cost proctors doing the supervision. The cost is infinitesimal making the profit potential astronomical.

"ALEC And The Circumventing Of Our Democracy" - M.O.C. #108

A must read for anyone concerned with education. Hired Guns on Astroturf: How to Buy and Sell School Reform

If you want to change government policy, change the politicians who make it. The implications of this truism have now taken hold in the market-modeled “education reform movement.” As a result, the private funders and nonprofit groups that run the movement have overhauled their strategy. They’ve gone political as never before—like the National Rifle Association or Big Pharma or (ed reformers emphasize) the teachers’ unions.

 Ed reformers spend at least a half-billion dollars a year in private money, whereas government expenditures on K-12 schooling are about $525 billion a year. Nevertheless, a half-billion dollars in discretionary money yields great leverage when budgets are consumed by ordinary expenses. But the reformers—even titanic Bill and Melinda Gates—see themselves as competing with too little against existing government policies. Hence, to revolutionize public education, which is largely under state and local jurisdiction, reformers must get state and local governments to adopt their agenda as basic policy; they must counter the teachers’ unions’ political clout. To this end, ed reformers are shifting major resources—staff and money—into state and local campaigns for candidates and legislation.

Jonah Edelman, CEO of Stand for Children ($5.2 million from Gates, 2003-2011), sums up the thinking: “We’ve learned the hard way that if you want to have the clout needed to change policies for kids, you have to help politicians get elected. It’s about money, money, money” (Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2010).*

...Take the case of Tennessee, where 35 percent of every teacher’s evaluation is now based on standardized test scores. On November 6, 2011, the New York Times reported that no tests exist for over half the subjects and grades, including kindergarten, first, second, and third grades, art, music, and vocational training. So state officials ruled that a school’s average scores for another subject and grade will be used for teachers without student scores. For example, fifth-grade writing scores will be plugged into, say, a first-grade teacher’s evaluation. In addition, teachers can choose the plug-in subject themselves for 15 percent of the 35 percent. This means they have to bet on which classes will produce the highest scores. A travesty? Not for the ever-ready boosters of the ed reform movement, including the New York Times editorial page. The Times offered this judgment on November 11: “

…political forces [in Tennessee] are now talking about delaying the use of these evaluations. State lawmakers and education officials must resist any backsliding.” Anything goes as long as it’s stamped “ed reform.”

...Yes, the policies of ed reformers are wreaking havoc in public education, but equally destructive is the impact of their strategy on American democracy. From the start, the we-know-best stance, the top-down interventions at every level of schooling, the endless flow of big private money, and the imperviousness to criticism have undermined the “public” in public education. Moreover, the large private foundations that fund the ed reformers are accountable to no one—not to voters, not to parents, not to the children whose lives they affect. The beefed-up political strategy extends the damage: the ed reformers (most of whom take advantage of tax-exempt status) are immersing themselves in the dollars-mean-votes world of lobbying and campaigning.

...Another of Williams’s comments reveals what is so misguided about this brand of education reform: “I think charter schools should be paying advocacy organizations for their advocacy work out of their per pupil dollars. If you think of running a school as running a business, any sound business is going to allocate right off the bat a certain percentage of their funding towards lobbying, advocacy work.” But why think of running a school as running a business? Striving for efficiency is one thing—a good thing in many human endeavors, including school administration. But the analogy doesn’t hold beyond that: a school’s “bottom line” is not measured in dollars of profit; it shouldn’t waste resources on winning “market share” away from other schools. And why should charter schools pay for advocacy out of per-pupil dollars? Those are taxpayer dollars meant for those children’s education; the students “carry” those dollars away from a regular public school and give them to a charter school.

Full Story here: http://www.alternet.org/education/154797/hired_guns_on_astroturf%3A_how_to_buy_and_sell_school_reform/

From Schools Matter: Nine Years Later, with a big media empire to promote your every doing, and people still think the job you're doing an awful job when it comes to schools

After 9 Years of Corporate Reform Schooling, New Yorkers Conclude Bloomberg Has Failed to Improve Education

Even with his own media empire to tout his puffed up edu-exploits, and even with a herd of imported thin-lipped British economists as edu-advisors, and even with a passel of lawyers led by Joel "McChoakumchild" Klein to put a choke hold on the NYC Department of Education, and even with an unending stream of philanthrocapitalist dough to push his pet projects, and even with his own appointed Board to rubber stamp his every edu-whim, and even with billions of his own cash to craft an image and buy the best Madison Avenue PR machine to lead an unending propaganda campaign, the Little Prince just could not pull it off. The business of education as a business just went bust!

According to a new poll that, by the way, mirrors a number of attitudes expressed in the latest PDK poll, 2 out of 3 New Yorkers say Bloomberg has not improved education in the New York City. A big clip from the NYTimes:

New Yorkers are broadly dissatisfied with the quality of their public schools, and most say the city’s school system has stagnated or declined since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of it nine years ago, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

Mr. Bloomberg has made improving the schools a focus of his mayoralty, seizing authority over the bureaucracy, doubling the budget and opening hundreds of additional, small schools. Still, even as his overall approval rating, 45 percent, is at a six-year low, considerably fewer residents — 34 percent — approve of how the mayor is handling education.