Chicago Public Schools Raising Property Taxes Eight Percent; About Half the Increase Will Go Toward Teacher Pensions

October 10, 2017

(Chicago Sun Times) - The Chicago Public Schools will raise city property taxes this year by $225 million, officials said Wednesday.

CPS’s share of property taxes will total $2.929 billion in 2018 — up 8.3 percent from 2017’s $2.704 billion. The difference will cost the average homeowner another $177 a year. More than half the increase to taxpayers — $154 million — will go to teacher pensions.

The increase — combined with last year’s $250 million tax increase — means that city taxpayers have ponied up about half a billion dollars just for schools since 2015, and $1.06 billion in total tax hikes.

Still, CPS still has to come up with $146 million more toward a $784 million pension-fund payment due next June, CPS finance official Walter Stock said at one of three public hearings held Tuesday. That’s despite winning more pension money from the state as part of a landmark school funding reform bill that recently passed.

When that law passed in August, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made no apologies for the $125 million in new taxes it would permit the appointed Board of Education to raise on its own, without involvement from the elected City Council.

The school board also will generate more money, as it has every year since 2011, by raising property taxes to the cap allowed under state law, and through a capital improvement tax. That accounts for the other $100 million of the $225 million increase.

A quiet provision in the new state law also required CPS to allocate more money to its privately managed charter schools. Late last week, when it revised its budget with updated figures from state funding reform, CPS pegged that number at $37 million more dollars.

Mark Zuckerberg's Charitable Contribution is to Himself  So He and Other Elitists Can Shape the World in Their Own Images Against the "Useless Eaters"

The move is not surprising given that five years ago Zuckerberg signed the "Giving Pledge" — along with other tech billionaires such as Bill Gates — to give away the majority of his wealth.

Bill Gates and other elitists claim that their plans will reduce global poverty. And they will, but not in the way they would have you believe. The elitists plan to reduce global poverty by eliminating the poor in the world through vaccines, control of the global food supply, GMOs, control over growing your own food, control of vitamins and herbal supplements, control of clean water, control of health care, and control of cheap forms of energy. If you think this won't affect you, just remember that the gap between rich and poor is growing rapidly until one day soon there will be only the rich and the poor, and you will be the next target for elimination. The power elite want to reduce the world's population down to 500 million — chances are, you're not one of their chosen few.  

Let me explain how this works for those of you that know absolutely nothing about asset protection. Remember my words whenever you hear some really rich guy telling you he is donating all his money to charity rather than leave it to his kids....IT IS ALL A SCAM. Here is how it works... A charitable trust is established which focuses on the interests of the person for whom the trust is established. (Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have theirs.) Over time, assets that generate income such as stocks are transferred to the trust to support the causes as previously mentioned. Upon the establishers death the remaining assets are transferred to the trust to continue the mission.....Thus avoiding the 55% estate tax.... So where's the scam? Guess who manages the charity? The kids of the person who established the trust, and they are paid a respectable amount per year for their service...say about 3%. That is $1.25B per year to Zuckerberg's heirs for NOTHING. The tax laws protect the ultra rich. Just don't think they are really giving anything away. They are protecting their wealth. [NeoGeo at Yahoo]

Let's not be naive - without knowing anything about this story, we can all still assume it's first and foremost a way to shield his money from taxes and regulation. Probably taking a page from the success of the Clinton Foundation. If he owns Facebook stock there are all kinds of rules about insider trading, reporting, taxes, announcing planned sales, etc... But if you put all the money in a "charity" that you control then there are suddenly a lot fewer rules and penalties to deal with. I'm sure any money going out of the charity will go to quasi-political organizations that promote increasing immigration so he can hire cheaper workers and fire Americans or other groups that promote his liberal leanings or that help his business. I doubt we'll see much of the money going to soup kitchens and Special Olympics. And as long as he keeps making donations to the right politicians he can guarantee he will never get audited or even questioned by law enforcement. [Raul at Yahoo]

People are inexplicably upset about Mark Zuckerberg's decision to "give away" 99% of his fortune

December 2, 2015

Yahoo Finance - Mark Zuckerberg's announcement on Tuesday that he would be giving away 99% of his Facebook stock to "advance human potential and promote equality" was greeted with universal cheers, right?

Well, no.

There were a lot of people who found bad things to say about the announcement.

They fell into several camps.

The 'gotcha — it's not really a charity!' camp

BuzzFeed pointed out that the organization they're donating to, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is a corporation — an LLC — rather than a nonprofit charity. In addition, the initiative won't necessarily be donating all the money to charitable causes — it will also make private investments and do things like advocacy work and lobbying.

Entrepreneur Anil Dash called the structure of the giveaway "clearly flawed," but admitted that:

It's impossible to know how much of those flaws are about ulterior corporatist goals and how much are accommodations of arcane regulations. For example, almost all non-profit organizations are founded as conventional corporations and then converted after the fact, so starting as an LLC may not be an indicator of future purpose.

As Bloomberg explains, setting up the organization as an LLC allows it to spend money on lobbying, earn money to reinvest in the organization, do joint ventures with fewer restrictions, and lets them give away money at a pace they determine rather than the mandatory 5% per year for non-profits.

The 'Zuck sucks' camp

Gawker pointed out that Zuckerberg's donation is going toward furthering the things that he thinks would help the world, which are not necessarily the things that other people think would help the world.

For instance, the writer called Zuckerberg's question "Can you learn and experience 100 times more than we do today?" a "patently hellish" vision that could only be hatched by a "technocrat." 

The "billionaires don't know anything" camp

There were several takes with this angle. Dash pointed out that most charitable contributions don't really help society:

No matter how good their intentions, the net result of most such efforts has typically been neutral at best, and can sometimes be deeply destructive. The most valuable path may well be to simply invest this enormous pool of resources in the people and institutions that are already doing this work (including, yes, public institutions funded by tax dollars) and trust that they know their domains better than someone who’s already got a pretty demanding day job.

 

A lot of folks linked to a 2010 Der Spiegel interview with businessman Peter Kramer, who argued that billionaires in the U.S. who give their money away are implicitly saying that they know better how to help society than government does:

It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it's not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That's a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

Bill Gates, Common Core and Agenda 21

The imposition of federal Common Core standards, which were developed using money from the loudest and wealthiest corporate school reform proponent, Bill Gates, and are suspiciously promoted by Exxon-Mobil (Rockefeller-owned), will exacerbate the high-stakes testing problem. Corporate school reform folks can’t wait for Common Core tests to be implemented so that they can claim that more public schools are “failing.” They will swoop in with fancy plans for new, for-profit charter schools and start stuffing their pockets with public funds that were supposed to be used educating our children. [Source]

Top Ten Scariest People in Education Reform: # 5 – Bill Gates

This is the fifth in a countdown series of introductions, a list of the top ten scariest people leading education in America.  For numbers 6, 7, 8,  9 and 10,  click here.

WhatIsCommonCore.WordPress.com - The biggest philanthropist on earth comes across as the epitome of sincere, nerdy nice-guy.  And he probably is very nice and very sincere. But does sincerity trump truth?

The truth is, Bill Gates’ herculean attempt to fund and market Common Core to Americans, and to circumvent the voting public on educational issues, is dangerously, dangerously misguided.

Thus, not everybody is happy in philanthropy land. The biggest philanthropist in the world got behind the unproven experiment of Common Core. Using money rather than the voice of the American voter, pushed it into schools, circumventing any vetting by legislative, educator or parent groups.

Gates’ astronomical wealth has persuaded millions that Common Core is the solution to education problems, the argument from everywhere, approved (by him) and beyond debate. But let me repeat the fact: regardless of whether the standards are horrible or glorious, the truth remains that whenever unelected philanthropists are permitted to direct public policy, the voting public gets cut out of the process. 

It’s happening all over the U.S., but not just in the U.S. The Gates-directing-world-education effect is happening everywhere.

Since Gates has no constituency, he can’t be un-elected; so it’s not the the wisdom of experienced educators, but simply one man’s money that is directing implementation of  the controversial Common Core. His  money has bought, besides technology, work groups, and a seat at the policy making table, extreme marketing success.

He’s got control of the education opinion factory. When Common Core was debated at the Indiana State Capitol, who showed up to advocate for Common Core?  Stand for Children, which Bill Gates funds.   

He also funds Common Core advocates: 

• the League of Education Voters, 
• the Center for Reinventing Public Education and 
• the Partnership for Learning. 

Gates owns Editorial Projects in Education, parent of Education Week magazine.

No wonder, then, even educators don’t seem to know the full truth about Common Core. They’re reading Education Week and  the Harvard Education Letter.  Translation: they are reading Gates’ dollar bills. (By the way: want to make some money selling out your fellow teachers?  Gates is searching for a grant recipient who will receive $250,000 to accelerate networking of teachers toward acceptance of Common Core.)

Wherever you see advocates for Common Core, you see Gates’ influence.  

• He gave a million dollars to the national PTA to advocate to parents about Common Core.  
• He gave  Common Core developer NGA/CCSSO roughly $25 million to promote it (CCSSO: 2009–$9,961,842, 2009– $3,185,750, 2010–$743,331, 2011–$9,388,911; NGA Center: 2008–$2,259,780.)  
• He gave $15 million to Harvard for “education policy” research.  
• He gave $9 million to universities promoting “breakthrough learning models” and global education.   
• Gates paid inBloom $100 million to collect and analyze schools’ data as part of a public-private collaborative that is building  “shared technology services.” InBloom, formerly known as the Shared Learning Collaborative, includes districts, states, and the unelected Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).  
• The list goes on and on and on.

It’s hard to know exactly how much money Gates has put toward the promotion of Common Core because of the chameleon-like wording of  educational granting areas. 

For example, he gave $3 million to Stanford University and $3 million to Brown University for “college and career readiness.” (The average person wouldn’t know that college and career readiness is a code phrase defined as common core by the Department of Education.)

Sometimes he’s promoting “support activities around educational issues related to school reform” for the CCSSO (common core developer) and other times he’s “helping states build data interoperability,” which not everyone would recognize as Common assessments’ bed-making.

According to Gates himself, he’s spent $5 billion to promote his vision of education since 2000.

He really,  reeally believes in Common Core.  So it doesn’t matter that Common Core is an experiment on our children that’s never been tested and has been rejected by countless top education analysts. It doesn’t matter that Common Core is an un-American, top-down, nonrepresentative system  that state legislatures didn’t even get to vet.  Bill Gates wants it.

And not just in America– he wants global education standards.

Gates’ company, Microsoft, signed a cooperative agreement with the United Nations’ education branch, UNESCO. In it, Gates said, “Microsoft supports the objectives of UNESCO as stipulated in UNESCO’s constitution and intends to contribute to UNESCO’s programme priorities.” 

UNESCO’s  “Education For All” key document is called “The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments.”  Read the full text here:  http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf

So Gates partners with the U.N.’s educational and other goals via UNESCO’s “Education for All”, which seeks to teach the same standards to all children (and adults) on a global scale.  Why is this a problem?  It supercedes local control over what is taught to students, and dismisses the validity of the U.S. Constitution, all in the name of inclusivity and education and tolerance for all nations.

At this link you can learn about how Education For All works:

“Prior to the reform of the global EFA coordination architecture in 2011-2012, the Education for All High-Level Group brought together high-level representatives from national governments, development agencies, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector. Its role was to generate political momentum and mobilize financial, technical and political support towards the achievement of the EFA goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From 2001-2011 the High-Level Group met annually.”

The six goals of “Education For All” are claimed to be internationally agreed-upon. On the linked Education and Awareness page of the U.N. website, we learn:

“Education, Public  Awareness and Training is the focus of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21. This is a cross-sectoral theme both relevant to the implementation of the whole of Agenda 21 and indispensable”   http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/susdevtopics/sdt_educawar.shtml

Did you get that?  Education is indispensable for the U.N. to get its agenda pushed onto every citizen worldwide.  They just admitted it out loud.  They want a strong hand in determining what is taught worldwide.

So then we click on Chapter 36.  In 36.2 it says we should “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development.  (No discussion, no vote, no input needed on this reorientation plan, apparently.)

Chapter 36.3 says:  “Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes…. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development…  To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods.”

The take-away?  What does Bill Gates agree to in his Microsoft – UNESCO partnership?

• Environmental education will be incorporated in formal education.
• Any value or attitude held by anyone globally that stands independent to that of the United Nations’ definition of “sustainable education” must change.  Current attitudes are unacceptable.
• Education will be belief-and-spirituality based as defined by the global collective.
• Environmental education will be integrated into every subject, not just science.

The stated objectives (36.4) include endorsing “Education for All,” and “giving special emphasis to the further training of decision makers at all levels.”

Hence the need for people like Gates to influence the training of decision makers.  When asked what matters most to him, Gates said: education. His version of education as reported by The Huffington Post:

“I’d pick education, if I was thinking broadly about America,” Gates responded. “It’s our tool of equality.”  Is it coincidence that equality and redistribution are also concepts that Linda Darling-Hammond, Chaka Fattah and Arne Duncan are promoting in the federal Equity and Excellence Commission?

How committed is Bill Gates to the United Nations having a say in American education?

In his annual letter, Gates emphasized the importance of  following the United Nations’ Millennial Goals and measuring teachers more closely.  One of those UN Millennial goals is to achieve universal education.  Also, Gates helped create Strong American Schools (a successor to the STAND UP campaign launched in 2006, which was an outgrowth of UNESCO’s Millennium Campaign Goals for Universal Education). It called for U.S. national education standards. (link 1) (link 2)

Also,  Gates’ Foundation funded the International Benchmarking Advisory Group report for Common Core Standards on behalf of the National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, and ACHIEVE, Inc. titled, “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education.” This report showed the United Nations is a member of the International Benchmarking Advisory Group for Common Core Standards. (link)

It appears that Bill Gates is more than a common core philanthopist; he is a promoter of global sameness of education as defined by UNESCO and the U.N.

That’s scary.

Houghton Mifflin Harcout Partners in Common Core 

From their Website: Making a successful transition to the Common Core State Standards is as much about the tangibles—comprehensive, personalized curricula; tools and skills for analyzing data effectively and productively; informed staff and leader development; and parental involvement—as it is about the intangibles. It will require the positive energy generated by working together to achieve a common goal and the momentum that carries you from implementation to assessment and beyond. In Houghton Mifflin Harcourt you have a trusted partner to rely on as you take on this opportunity, a partner who will share the responsibilities that come with achieving all that the Common Core promises. We have created a wide range of content, curricula, and services to support school leaders, teachers and educators, parents, and especially students with this transition—because ultimately your energy is focused not just on implementing the Common Core standards, but on realizing their intent: guiding all students to 21st-century college and career readiness.

Check out the Executive Leadership and Board of Directors for confirmation that big corporations are profiting from Common Core.

Linda K. Zecher President, Chief Executive Officer and Director 

Linda K. Zecher joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in September 2011 as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, bringing a strong track record of business transformation and results.  Her extensive sales, marketing and technology experience contribute to her ability to successfully lead HMH’s transformation into a global leader in educational content and media.  Previously, she served as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's $8 billion Worldwide Public Sector organization, where she led a team of nearly 2,000 sales and marketing professionals serving government, education and healthcare customers in more than 100 countries. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2003, Linda held leadership positions with Texas Instruments, Bank of America, PeopleSoft, Oracle and Evolve Corp. Zecher currently serves on the board of Cradles to Crayons and has also served on the U.S. State Department’s board for overseas schools, the Emily Couric Leadership Forum, the Intelligence and National Security Association board, and James Madison University’s board of visitors.

Eric Shuman Chief, Financial Officer 

Eric joined HMH in 2009 as Chief Operating Officer and was appointed Chief Financial Officer in late 2011 following the appointment of CEO Linda Zecher. He brings a long track record of leadership and results in media and content, and deep experience in business model transformation.  Prior to joining HMH, Eric served as Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Lifelong Learning Group, a division of The Thomson Corporation specializing in training, skills assessment, and higher education publishing. Previously, Eric was Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Thomson Learning, and Chief Financial Officer for Thomson Newspapers. In those capacities, he led several business integrations, restructurings and significant mergers and acquisitions, spanning fifteen years with Thomson. Eric holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Boston College.

William Bayers Executive, Vice President and General Counsel 

Bill joined Houghton Mifflin in May of 2007 as Senior Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel and was made Executive Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel in March 2008. Previously, he served as Vice President and General Counsel of Harcourt Education Group. Bill oversees all legal, regulatory and corporate matters for the Company. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Dr. Tim Cannon, Executive Vice President, International Operations and Global Strategic Alliances 

Tim's career in business, organizational and IT strategy spans nearly three decades. Before joining HMH, Tim was Senior Director of Business Strategy for Microsoft's Worldwide Public Sector organization, where he oversaw the development and execution of business strategies to better serve Government, Education and Health customers and partners worldwide. Prior to that role, Tim was Senior Director of Business Strategy for Microsoft’s U.S Public Sector. He has also held leadership roles at companies like Digital Equipment Corporation and Oracle, and helped many large organizations cope with the dynamics of change by implementing responses to maximize shareholder value. Tim is the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Florida.

Brook Colangelo, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

Brook joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January 2013 from the White House, where he held the role of Chief Information Officer (CIO) since 2009. With over ten years’ experience in technology strategy and implementation, Brook joined the White House team in 2008 to spearhead the Obama-Biden transition project. Prior to that, he held several senior IT leadership roles, including within the Democratic National Convention Committee, The American Red Cross’ Hurricane Recovery Program and QRS Newmedia. Brook holds an honors degree in Political Communications from The George Washington University.

Mary Cullinane, Chief Content Officer and Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs 

Mary is HMH’s first Chief Content Officer. She has led the transformation of the company’s content development capability, bringing a unique combination of education and business experience. Prior to joining HMH in 2012, Mary spent ten years spearheading Microsoft′s education-related innovation programs and initiatives worldwide, including its national 1:1 access programs and its groundbreaking School of the Future in Philadelphia. With another decade of experience as an educator, Director of Technology and administrator in the public sector, Mary is a recognized thought leader in the area of education reform and the effective use of technology. She has testified before the U.S. Congress, and co- authored the book What Next?, which documents lessons learned during the building of the School of the Future. Mary holds a Master of Public Policy and Administration from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts from The College of New Jersey. Mary is a member of the board of the Boston Children's Museum.

John K. Dragoon, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

John joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2012. Previously, he served as Chief Marketing Officer and Channel Chief of Novell, where he led the company's Marketing and Partner programs for over seven years. Prior to joining Novell, John served as Senior Vice President, Marketing and Product Management at Art Technology Group (ATG). Before ATG, John served as Vice President, Operations at Internet Capital Group, where he served on the board of nine partner companies and guided strategy, marketing, business development, financing and product development. John also spent more than 16 years at IBM, where he held a number of marketing and sales positions. He holds an MBA from Cornell University and a BS from Union College. 
 
Gary Gentel, President, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Consumer Publishing 

Gary joined Houghton Mifflin in October of 2003 as Corporate Vice President and Director of Trade Sales and was promoted to Interim President of the combined Trade Group in July 2007. He was given the permanent position in December of that year. Previously, he served as President of Candlewick Press—a children's publisher based in Cambridge, SVP of Trade Sales at Scholastic Books, and SVP and Publisher of The Grosset and Dunlap Group at GP Putnam's Sons—now a division of Penguin Books. Gary started his publishing career as a Sales Representative at Random House in 1980, rising to VP of Children's Sales by 1990.

James G. Nicholson, President, Riverside Publishing 

Since 2010, Jim Nicholson has served as President of Riverside Publishing — the professional and educational assessment arm of HMH.  Prior to his current position, he served as Riverside’s Chief Operating Officer, where he was responsible for the company’s strategic planning and product development, overseeing the integration of the Edusoft® Assessment Management System.  With more than 20 years of experience in educational publishing, Jim previously held senior leadership positions at Pearson, including Vice President of Finance for its Literacy business unit.  He holds an MBA from DePaul University and a BS from Indiana University.

Lee Ramsayer, Executive Vice President, U.S. Sales 

Before joining HMH, Lee served as Senior Vice President of sales for Monster’s Government Solutions sector. While at Monster, Lee built a dedicated sales team that addressed workforce and economic development in regional economies, and also drove change management and new strategy development sales and system integration partnerships. Prior to Monster, Lee served as General Manager, Government Sales and Consulting Services for Microsoft. In this role, Lee led the development of Microsoft’s strategic approach to state and local governments including the development of go-to-market strategies. Lee currently serves on the board of Innovate Education, a national organization focused on STEM education.

Lesa Scott, President, Heinemann 

Lesa Scott is President of Heinemann, a division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt dedicated to the development of professional resources and educational services for teachers – from kindergarten to college.  A former science, social studies, and health teacher, Lesa’s career in education spans more than thirty years. She left the classroom to market and sell textbooks for Laidlaw Brothers Publishers, subsequently rising to sales and marketing leadership roles at Scott Foresman Educational Publishers, McDougal Littell and Scholastic.  Lesa received a BS and MS in education from Arkansas State University and completed post-graduate studies at Texas Women’s University.

Dr. Nicole Melander, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy 

Nicole joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in January 2014 as Senior Vice President of Digital Strategy. Previously, she served as the Chief Technology Officer of Achieving the Dream (ATD), a national reform network dedicated to community college student success and completion. Prior to joining ATD, Nicole held education and technology leadership positions at Deloitte Consulting, Microsoft and Oracle. In the academic world, she taught on the topics of collaboration technology and social media for business at American University where she won the campuswide “Teaching with Technology Award."

Lawrence K. Fish, Director and Chairman of the Board

Lawrence K. Fish has served as a member of the board of directors since August 2010 and Chairman of the Board since January 2011. Mr. Fish served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (“Citizens”) from 2005 to 2008 and before as Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, from 1992, of Citizens. Mr. Fish is a member of the Corporation (Board of Trustees) of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He serves on the boards of Textron Inc., Tiffany & Co., and NBH Holdings Corp. He is also an Honorary Trustee of the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. Mr. Fish’s extensive experience in the areas of finance, marketing, general management and corporate governance enables him to provide the Company with effective leadership on the board of directors.

Sheru Chowdhry, Director

Sheru Chowdhry served as a member of the board of directors from March 2010 through March 2012 and rejoined the board in June 2012. Mr. Chowdhry joined Paulson & Co. Inc., a hedge fund, in 2004 as a Senior Vice President and has been a Managing Director and Head of Distressed & Bankruptcy Research since 2008. Previously, he was a research analyst at DebtTraders Inc., covering distressed and bankrupt securities, and an investment banker in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at JP Morgan Securities. Mr. Chowdhry’s financial expertise and significant experience with debt and equity capital markets render him a valuable member of the board.

L. Gordon Crovitz, Director

L. Gordon Crovitz has served as a member of the board of directors since August 2012. From 1980-2007 Mr. Crovitz held a number of positions with Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal culminating in his role as Executive Vice President for Dow Jones and Publisher of The Wall Street Journal. He was co-founder of e-commerce software company Press+ in 2009. Mr. Crovitz serves on the Board of Directors at Minneapolis Star Tribune, Business Insider, Blurb, Dunn & Bradstreet and Marin Software. He is on the board of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars. Mr. Crovitz’s management roles in the publishing industry and extensive experience as a director enables him to provide the Company with valuable guidance.

Jill A. Greenthal, Director and Chair of Nominating, Ethics, and Governance Committee

Jill A. Greenthal has served as a member of the board of directors since June 2012. Ms. Greenthal has been a Senior Advisor in Private Equity at the Blackstone Group since 2007, working closely with the company’s global media and technology teams to assist in investments in those sectors. She also currently serves as a director of Akamai Technologies, Michaels Stores and The Weather Channel Companies. Prior to 2007, Ms. Greenthal was an investment banker and partner at Blackstone and Credit Suisse First Boston. Ms. Greenthal has extensive experience in the media industry and in advising technology and media companies, which enables her to provide valuable guidance to the Company.

John F. Killian, Director and Chair of Audit Committee

John F. Killian has served as a member of the board of directors since January 2011. Mr. Killian was Executive Vice President for Verizon and served as Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer from March 2009 through October 2010. Prior to becoming CFO, Mr. Killian was President of Verizon Business from October 2005 until March 2009, the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Verizon Telecom from June 2003 until October 2005, and the Senior Vice President and Controller of Verizon Telecom from April 2002 until June 2003. Mr. Killian serves on the board of directors at ConEdison Inc. and is a Chairman of the Board of Providence College. Mr. Killian brings extensive financial expertise to the board, as well as significant management and leadership experience.

John R. McKernan Jr., Director and Chair of Compensation Committee

John R. McKernan, Jr. served as a member of the board of directors from August 2010 through June 2012 and rejoined the board in September 2012. Mr. McKernan is currently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of McKernan Enterprises, Inc., in Portland, Maine. He is the former Chairman of Education Management Corporation, a provider of post-secondary education in North America, where he served as Chief Executive Officer from September 2003 until February 2007 and continues to serve as a director. Mr. McKernan is a director of BorgWarner Inc. and served as Governor of the State of Maine from 1987 to 1995. Mr. McKernan is currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Foundation for Maine’s Community Colleges and serves on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce. Mr. McKernan brings to the board superior leadership capabilities, knowledge of the legal and legislative processes and significant prior experience as a director.

Jon Miller, Director

Jon Miller joined the board of directors in May 2013. Mr. Miller served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Media Group at News Corp. and was its Chief Digital Officer from April 2009 to September 2012. Previously, Mr. Miller was the Founder and Partner at Velocity Interactive Group, an investment firm focusing on internet and digital media, from its inception in February 2007 to April 2009. Prior to founding Velocity, Mr. Miller served as the Chief Executive Officer of America Online, Inc., or AOL and previously as Chief Executive Officer and President of USA Information and Services. Mr. Miller is a trustee of the American Film Institute and The Paley Center for Media. Mr. Milller serves on the boards of TripAdvisor, Radio Télévision Luxembourg and Shutterstock. Mr. Miller has extensive experience in the internet and digital media industry, which enables him to provide valuable guidance to the Company.

E. Rogers Novak Jr., Director

E. Rogers Novak, Jr. has served as a member of the board of directors since November 2012. He is a founder and managing member of Novak Biddle Venture Partners, an early-stage venture fund focused on investment opportunities in businesses focused on education, security, big data analytics, and business-to-business-to-consumer. Roger formerly served as Lead Director of Blackboard which was acquired by Providence Equity Partners. Roger currently serves on several private company boards and is a member of the External Relations Council for the Department of Homeland Security’s Predict project. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for Kenyon College where he sits on the Budget, Financial and Audit Committee and the Information Resources Committee. From 2008 to 2011, Roger held a seat on the Board of the National Venture Capital Association and was their Treasurer and a member of their Executive Committee from 2009 to 2011. Mr. Novak’s significant prior experience as a director, especially in the education technology sector, render him a valuable member of the board.

Linda K. Zecher, Director

Linda K. Zecher joined Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in September 2011 as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director. Previously, she served as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's $8 billion Worldwide Public Sector organization, where she led a team of nearly 2,000 sales and marketing professionals serving government, education and healthcare customers in more than 100 countries. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2003, Linda held leadership positions with Texas Instruments, Bank of America, PeopleSoft, Oracle and Evolve Corp. She currently serves on the U.S. State Department's Board for Overseas Schools, the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation Advisory Council, and the Emily Couric Leadership Forum. Linda is also a former member of the Intelligence National Security Association, the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council, and James Madison University's Board of Visitors.  

Related: 

The Bill and Melinda Gates (of Hell) Foundation
Bill Gates' Agenda for the 21st Century
Tax-exempt Foundations in the U.S. Operate to Promote Collectivism (Communism)
The World's Richest Give Billions to Remake the World in Their Image
The Gates Foundation, Vaccines World Population from Seven Billion Down to 500 Million Using Vaccines
Gulen Islamist Charter School Movement in the U.S. is Funded By Taxpayers
Common Core standards shake up the education business
Rupert Murdoch Wins Contract to Develop Common Core Tests
Klein’s Amplify Tablets Crack the $17 Billion Market
Following the Money Trail: Who Profits From the Implementation of Common Core State Standards?
A Common Core of Corporate Profit
Is Profit Driving the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative?
Obama program making these people filthy rich
How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution
THE BUSH FAMILY WILL PROFIT HANDSOMELY FROM COMMON CORE IMPLEMENTATION
Profit motive behind Common Core Standards
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections





CCS: A Cash Cow For Corporate Education Raiders 
David Coleman is one of these consultants (see Schools Matter and Susan Ohanian) and the “chief architect” of CCS. Like many of the most well-known Ed Deformers (e.g., Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Walton Family, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Mike Bloomberg), Coleman had virtually no real experience in the classroom. In fact, according to Schools Matter, his only pedagogical experience was a little tutoring he did while an undergrad at Yale, where he studied English. After this, he went on to work in business, making a lot of money with the Grow Network, which was bought by McGraw-Hill in 2005. In 2007 he left McGraw-Hill and co-founded the nonprofit Student Achievement Partners, which played a leading role in creating the Common Core Standards. He now leads Student Achievement Partners in their work helping teachers and policymakers to implement the Common Core State Standards.

U.S. Department of Education Should Be Eliminated (Along with Other Federal Agencies) and State Sovereignty and Rights Should Be Restored as Intended by the Founding Fathers

Today's education system is driven by money from the federal government and private foundations, both working hand-in-hand with the Education Establishment headquartered in the federal Department of Education and staffed by the National Education Association (NEA). These forces have combined with psychologists, huge textbook publishers, teacher colleges, the healthcare profession, government bureaucrats, big corporations, pharmaceutical companies and social workers to invade local school boards, classrooms and private homes in the name of "fixing" education. The record shows that each of these entities has benefited from this alliance through enriched coffers and increased political power.

The entire history of the education restructuring effort is carefully and thoroughly documented in a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. The book was written by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, a former official at the Department of Education in the Reagan Administration. While there in 1981-1982, Charlotte found the "mother lode" hidden away at the Department. She found all of the education establishment's plans for restructuring America's classrooms. Not only did she find the plans for what they intended to do, she discovered how they were going to do it and most importantly why.

Since uncovering this monstrous plan, Charlotte Iserbyt has dedicated her life to getting that information into the hands of parents, politicians and the news media. Iserbyt's book details how several wealthy families and their foundations began to implement a goal for a seamless non-competitive global system for commerce and trade.Schools were transformed from institutions that produced well educated individuals into training centers to produce compliant workers for a collectivist society. The wealthy families and foundations included The Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefellers. Their foundations [click here to read what Norman Dodd discovered about these foundations] today continue to lead the way in the development and funding of programs that are at the center of America's education system.

The process to restructure America's education system began in the opening years of the twentieth century and slowly picked up speed over the decades. The new system used psychology-based curriculum to slowly change the attitudes, values and beliefs of the students from those of earlier generations that identified strongly with liberty, patriotism, the work ethic, and comparable American values.

- The "Fix" That's Destroying Education in America (Excerpt), February 19, 2001

Some states push back against new school standards

May 28, 2013

AP - Some states are pushing back against a set of uniform benchmarks for reading, writing and math that have been fully adopted in most states and are being widely put in place this school year.

The new Common Core standards replace a hodgepodge of educational goals that had varied greatly from state to state. The federal government was not involved in the state-led effort to develop them but has encouraged the project.

While proponents say the new standards will better prepare students, critics worry they'll set a national curriculum for public schools rather than letting states decide what is best for their students.

There was little dissent when the standards were widely adopted in 2010, but that begun changing last year and debate picked up steam this year. The standards have divided Republicans, with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush championing them and conservatives such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, opposing them.

Lawmakers and governors are reviewing the standards in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Indiana, Alabama, South Carolina and Utah. Grassley, meanwhile, persuaded eight other senators to sign onto a letter in April asking the Senate Appropriations Committee to stop the Education Department from linking adoption of the standards to eligibility for other federal dollars. That same month, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution calling the standards an "inappropriate overreach."

Kristy Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Bush-backed Foundation for Excellence in Education, said conservatives historically have supported higher standards and greater accountability.

"The fact that they are opposed to Common Core now is a little surprising and disappointing given the fact that states came together to solve a need," Campbell said, adding that the new standards will allow for state-by-state comparisons that haven't been possible before. "We are going to have more rigorous assessments that are going to test kids against those higher standards and hopefully achieve what we all want, which is a dramatically greater quality of education in America."

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, Washington-based think tank that espouses conservative policies in state legislatures, debated in November whether to oppose the Common Core standards. The group ultimately decided to remain neutral, but its discussion, along with concerns raised by conservative groups such as the Goldwater and Pioneer institutes, caught the attention of lawmakers.

States that adopt the standards are supposed to use them as a base on which to build their curricula and testing, but they can make their benchmarks tougher than Common Core. While the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, found the new standards to be more rigorous than those that had been used by three-quarters of all states, critics question what will happen in states whose previous standards were tougher.

"So in that regard we really viewed Common Core as the race to the middle, not to the top," said Jamie Gass, director of the Center for School Reform at the Pioneer Institute.

Questions about testing also have arisen. In New York, among the first states to test students based on the standards, some students complained this spring that the Common Core-aligned English exams were too difficult to complete in the allotted time, and there were reports of students crying from stress.

Jonathan Butcher, education director for the Goldwater Institute, based in Phoenix, said opposition also is gaining traction because states and districts are at the point where money has to be appropriated to pay for the standards.

"As soon as states had to start spending money on the Common Core, as soon as it became a line item in the budget, people sit up and take notice," Butcher said. "And that wasn't going to happen until now, until states started to implement it. So it's unfortunate that there is so much attention to it so late in the game but that's kind of where we are. As soon as it starts to become a money issue people will pay attention."

Calculations on the cost of implementing the standards vary, with the Pioneer Institute and two other anti-Common Core conservative think tanks estimating it will cost $16 billion over seven years. Meanwhile, the Fordham Institute, which is pro-Common Core, said the cost over a one-to-three-year transition period could range from $8.3 billion to breaking even or even saving money, depending on things like whether the states purchase hard-copy textbooks or use open-source learning material written by experts, vetted by their peers and posted for free downloading.

One issue is that new tests tied to the standards will be computerized, requiring some states and districts to make technology upgrades. The Pioneer analysis included those technology costs; the Fordham one didn't.

In backing ultimately unsuccessful anti-Common Core legislation in Missouri, Rep. Kurt Bahr, a Republican from the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, said he was concerned that many communities lacked the bandwidth and hardware to administer the tests.

"We don't have that connectivity," Bahr said. "It's about to become a massive pocketbook issue."

The standards are the result of an initiative sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Carrie Heath Phillips, who oversees implementation of the standards for the council, played down the concerns about cost, noting that states periodically update their standards and that spending money to implement new ones is nothing new. She also acknowledged that technology upgrades can be a real issue for states that haven't invested in it, but asked, "If you're not moving into the 21st century now in 2013, when are you going to?"

The standards have a long list of supporters, including the National Parent Teacher Association, several education associations and businesses such as the Boeing Co. and Microsoft Corp.

Literacy teacher Jessica Cuthbertson said she attempted to fully implement the new standards in her sixth-grade Aurora, Colo., classroom for the first time this year and found her students' writing was "substantially better."

"I feel that often the debate isn't about the learning," said Cuthbertson, who also trains teachers to use the new standards as part of her job with a virtual teacher leadership initiative called the Center for Teaching Quality. "We're not talking about what the kids are producing and doing with these cool standards. We're talking about the big brother federal government controlling curriculum. I don't think it's really grounded in student learning, and yet in the hands of teachers focused on student learning, I just think there is nothing but hope."

While the federal government wasn't involved in developing the standards, it has provided $350 million to two consortiums developing Common Core tests. The federal Education Department also encouraged states to adopt the standards to compete for "Race to the Top" grants and seek waivers around some of the unpopular proficiency requirements of the No Child Left Behind federal education act.

"They have done some things that have kind of muddied the waters at the very least," said Butcher of the Goldwater Institute. "It's hard for me to say, 'Well, clearly the federal government has no interest in this.'"

But in Michigan, where the Republican-led Legislature is taking steps aimed at halting the standards, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder is defending them as a "really important opportunity" for the state.

"Unfortunately, it's been too much about politics," he said. "It's being viewed as the federal government putting another federal mandate on us. ... It was the governors of the states getting together ... to say we want a partner at the national level and all levels to say, 'Let's raise the bar.'"

Related:

• The U.S. Department of Education Should Be Abolished: Start by Ending the Federal Programs 'Race to the Top' and 'No Child Left Behind'
• Eliminate the U.S. Education Department and the Department of Energy Before Raising Taxes and Cutting Medicare and Social Security

Powerful, Politically Connected Teachers' Labor Union Close Schools for a Week in Chicago to Force Labor Deal

Chicago Teachers Rally After Tentative Labor Ddeal

September 16, 2012

Reuters - Thousands of striking Chicago teachers rallied on Saturday to keep the pressure on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to wrap up an agreement with their union to end a strike that has closed the nation's third largest school district for a week.

The rally brought labor leaders, community activists and thousands of striking teachers to Chicago's Union Park for one of the largest demonstrations against Emanuel's education reforms since the strike began on Monday.

"You have proven to the world that you're not going to take it anymore," Lorretta Johnson, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, told demonstrators the day after the two sides reached a tentative labor deal.

Led by Chicago Teachers Union president and former high school chemistry teacher Karen Lewis, 29,000 unionized teachers, counselors, nurses and other support staff staged their first strike in 25 years, leaving 350,000 Chicago students with no school this week.

Emanuel angered the Chicago teachers by trying to push through proposals to radically reform teacher performance evaluations and weaken job protection for teachers whose schools are closed or perform poorly academically.

He retreated from some of his proposed reforms, although details of what he has agreed to with the union have not been made public. Negotiators for the mayor and the union announced a tentative agreement on Friday that could lead to an end to the strike.

The confrontation has left many Democratic mayors and politicians supporting Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama. Other Democrats have sided with the unions, which are major financial supporters of the party and are needed to help Obama win re-election in November.

Emanuel denied on Saturday there had been any pressure from the White House to settle the strike.

"The short answer is no," Emanuel's spokeswoman, Sarah Hamilton, said. "There was no pressure, and no pressure would have worked, because they know that the mayor firmly believes that what we are doing to reform and improve our schools is the right thing."

The union is wary of Emanuel, who has been called a "bully" and a "liar" by Lewis.

Organizers hoped Saturday's rally would rival some of the huge demonstrations last year that protested the efforts of Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to curb the power of unions. The Wisconsin protests were unsuccessful, but drew tens of thousands of government workers, including teachers.

Activists and supporters from other unions joined the sea of strikers wearing red T-shirts at Saturday's rally.

"This is not just a Chicago struggle, this is a struggle for workers everywhere," civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said. "You've led a new struggle for courage."

'IT'S BEEN DRAINING'

If all goes well in the negotiations between the Chicago School Board and the union this weekend, Lewis said she would ask some 800 union activists on Sunday to suspend the strike and teachers would return to classrooms on Monday morning.

Lewis told reporters at a news conference on Friday that the union was making sure all of its "i's are dotted and t's are crossed."

Gideon MacKay, who teaches on Chicago's West Side, said he hoped Sunday's meeting would lead to a new contract, or at least a suspension of the strike.

"It's been draining," MacKay said. "We're teachers. That's what we do, we teach."

The strike is the biggest U.S. labor dispute in a year and has galvanized the national labor movement. It also has shone a light on a fierce U.S. debate over how to reform struggling urban schools across the country.

High school teacher Colleen Murray said the rally was meant to send the message that teachers were united.

"I'm hoping to see a fair evaluation process that recognizes that teachers cannot control all of the variables that go into student achievement," Murray said.

Both sides agree Chicago public schools are not doing well. Students perform poorly on standardized tests of math and reading, and the high school graduation rate is 60 percent, compared with 75 percent nationally and more than 90 percent in some affluent Chicago suburban high schools.

The union has railed against Chicago's unelected school board, which is stacked with representatives of business such as Penny Pritzker, an executive of Chicago's billionaire Pritzker conglomerate and a major Obama fundraiser. They say the board is trying to privatize and corporatize the public school system.

They have criticized Chicago's effort to open more publicly funded non-union charter schools, sometimes run by philanthropists, while some poor-performing traditional community public schools are being closed.

Read more here and here.

Test: Most Students Not Proficient in Writing

September 14, 2012

AP - Just a quarter of eighth and 12th grade students in the United States have solid writing skills, even when allowed to use spell-check and other computer word processing tools, according to results of a national exam released Friday.

Twenty-four percent of students at each grade level were able to write essays that were well developed, organized and had proper language and grammar. Three percent scored as advanced. The remainder showed just partial mastery of these skills.

"It is important to remember this is first draft writing," said Cornelia Orr, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which administers the Nation's Report Card tests. "They did have some time to edit, but it wasn't extensive editing."

Students who took the writing test in 2011 had an advantage that previous test takers did not: a computer with spell-check and thesaurus. Previously, students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress writing test had to use pencil and paper, but with changes in technology, and the need to write across electronic formats, the decision was made to switch to computers.

Orr said students use technology and tools like spell-check on a daily basis.

"It's as if years ago we had given them a pencil to write the essay and took away the eraser," she said.

She said word processing tools alone wouldn't result in significantly better writing scores if students didn't have the core skills of being able to organize ideas and present them in a clear and grammatical fashion.

Still, students in both grades who used the thesaurus and the backspace key more frequently had higher scores than those who used them less often. Students in the 12th grade who had to write four or five pages a week for English homework also had higher scores.

Because this was the first version of the computerized test, the board cautioned against comparing the results to previous exams. In 2007, 33 percent of eighth grade students scored at the proficient level, which represents solid writing skills, as did 24 percent at grade 12.

The results at both grade levels showed a continued achievement gap between white, black, Hispanic and Asian students. At the eighth grade, Asian students had the highest average score, which was 33 points higher than black students on a 300-point scale. At the 12th grade, white students scored 27 points above black students.

There was also a gender gap, with girls scoring 20 points higher on average than boys in the eighth grade and 14 points higher in 12th grade. Those who qualified for free and reduced price lunch, a key indicator of poverty, also had lower scores than those who did not; there was a 27 point difference between the two at the eighth grade.

For the 2011 exam, laptops were brought into public and private schools across the country and more than 50,000 students were tested to get a nationally representative sample. Students were given prompts that required them to write essays that explained, persuaded or conveyed an experience.

Kathleen Blake Yancey, a professor at Florida State University who served on the advisory panel for the test, said one factor to keep in mind is that research shows most students in the United States don't compose at the keyboard.

"What they do is sort of type already written documents into the machine, much as we used to do with typewriters four decades ago," she said.

Yancey said for this reason, there was some concern about having students write on the computer as opposed to by hand. Likewise, having the advantage of spell-check assumes students know how to use it. And in some schools and neighborhoods, computers are still not easily accessible.

"There are not so many students that actually learn to write composing at the keyboard," she said.

Yancey added that many kids who do have access to computers are not necessarily using them to write at school, but to take standardized tests and filling in bubbles.

"Digital technology is a technology," she said. "Paper and pencil is a technology. If technology were the answer, that would be pretty simple."

Republican Paul Ryan Backs Democrat Rahm Emanuel in Opposing Chicago Teachers' Strike Because NWO Cronies Plan to Hijack the Vast Wealth of the Public School System for the Top 1% (That's Why They've Jacked Up Public School Funding Over the Past Decade)

House Values Fall 30%, But Property Taxes Keep Rising (December 22, 2010), the nation’s state and local governments will collect an estimated $476 billion in property taxes in 2010–about 90% of state income tax revenues of $250 billion and sales tax revenues of $286 billion combined. A decade ago, property taxes were roughly equivalent to sales taxes. In 2000, property taxes totaled $247 billion and sales taxes came in at $223 billion—a differential of roughly 10%. Sales taxes have increased by 28% since 2000—roughly in line with the rise in consumer prices. State income taxes have risen nationally from $217 billion in 2000 to $250 billion in 2010, after peaking at $303 billion in 2008, just as the global financial meltdown began. That’s a rise of $33 billion, or 15%—actually less than inflation (27% from 2000 to 2010). Add all this up and we can see that local governments have become far more dependent on property tax revenues than they were in 2000. Thanks to stiff increases in junk fees and taxes of all kinds, state and local government revenue has climbed back to its pre-recession height of $1.29 trillion, roughly equal to the $1.32 trillion collected in 2008. In terms of total tax revenue, the recession is over—yet the gap between expenditures and revenues continues to widen in most states and local governments. As their properties continue sliding in value, devastating their net worth, do you reckon the average homeowner might start resenting the rapid rise of the taxes they pay for the privilege of owning real estate? Imagine if your income taxes rose by 27% even as your income declined by 30%. The ultimate tax hostage is the property owner. [Public School Systems Spent Recklessly on Wages, Benefits and Pensions During the Real Estate Bubble Years, and Continue to Do So; Property Values are Dropping But Property Taxes Are Not]

More than $500 billion is spent annually on public education in the United States (state and local spending for kindergarten through 12th grade education more than doubled since 1990). According to New America Foundation: "The federal government contributes about 8 percent of direct funding for elementary and secondary schools nationally (through the U.S. Department of Education, the federal government provides more than $40 billion a year on primary and secondary education programs). The two biggest federal programs are No Child Left Behind Title I Grants to local school districts ($14.5 billion in fiscal year 2009) and IDEA Special Education State Grants ($11.5 billion in fiscal year 2009). States rely primarily on income and sales taxes to fund elementary and secondary education. Property taxes support most of the funding that local government provides for education."

The nation’s public schools employ more than 6 million workers, and instructional staff receive about $295 billion in salary and benefits, according to federal estimates ... All told, personnel costs—the salaries and benefits that sustain the K-12 workforce—consume about 80 percent of school districts' budgets, and many policymakers are determined to drive those expenses down. Yet reducing those costs is not as simple as chopping away at the state or local education budget, or eliminating programs or services. State pension systems, which typically cover teachers, generally are protected by state constitutions and other laws, and courts have made it difficult to reduce benefits for current enrollees. And teachers’ salary schedules and health-care costs are often protected by hard-fought collective bargaining agreements at the local level. There’s a lot of money at stake. [Sean Cavanagh, Personnel costs prove tough to contain, Education Week, January 12, 2011]

Paul Ryan on Chicago Teachers Strike: ‘We Stand with Rahm Emanuel’

September 11, 2012

The Ticket - Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan spoke out against the Chicago Teachers Union strike on Monday, saying he stands behind Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's opposition to the demonstration.

"Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong," Ryan said in Portland, Ore., according to a pool report transcript. "We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel."

More than 26,000 education professionals in the Chicago area did not attend work on Monday over a contract negotiation dispute with the Chicago Board of Education.

President Barack Obama's administration declined to comment on the strike. Emanuel, elected mayor in 2011, was Obama's chief of staff from 2009 to 2010.

Here are Ryan's full remarks:

If you turned on the TV this morning or sometime today, you probably saw something about the Chicago teacher's union strike. I'd like to make a couple of comments about that because it does matter. I've known Rahm Emanuel for years. He's a former colleague of mine. Rahm and I have not agreed on every issue or on a lot of issues, but Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong. We know that Rahm is not going to support our
campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

We stand with the children and we stand with the families and the parents of Chicago because education reform, that's a bipartisan issue. This does not have to divide the two parties. And so, we were going to ask, where does President Obama stand? Does he stand with his former Chief of Staff Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with the children and the parents, or does he stand with the union? On issues like this, we need to speak out and be really clear. In a Romney-Ryan administration we will not be ambiguous, we will stand with education reform, we will champion bipartisan education reforms. This is a critical linchpin to the future of our country, to our economy, to make sure that our children go to the best possible school, and that education reforms revolve around the parents and the child, not the special interest group. This is something that's critical for all of us.

Read More...

'Race to the Top' Awarded Money to States That Agreed to Rate Teachers Based on Standardized Test Scores and That Encouraged the Creation of More Charter Schools

The ABCs of the Chicago Teachers’ Strike: New Evaluation System Looms Large

September 10, 2012

The Lookout - On Monday morning, 350,000 kids in Chicago found themselves without a classroom to bustle about as the city's teachers went on their first strike in 25 years. The sticking point? A new teacher evaluation system.

While Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the local teachers' union disagree on a long list of issues, including planned pay raises and sick day accrual, Emanuel said in a press conference Monday afternoon that the evaluation is the main obstacle to agreement. The new system would eventually use students' standardized test scores as 40 percent of a teacher's yearly evaluation. Teachers who don't improve their students' test scores would be fired.

Many Democrats, including Emanuel's former boss President Barack Obama, embrace this test-based way of judging educators. The president's "Race to the Top" federal program awarded money to states that agreed to rate teachers this way and institute other reforms, like encouraging the creation of more independent charter schools. As of last October, teachers can be dismissed in 14 states based on their students' test scores.

Union supporters argue that evaluating teachers using tests can be tricky, and that this "value-added" measurement can be volatile and inaccurate. Additionally, teachers who have a high proportion of poor students may have a harder time lifting their kids' scores than teachers who work in affluent districts. (About 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free or reduced federal lunches.) As many as 6,000 teachers would wrongly lose their jobs under the system, says Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis.

"Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," she said while announcing the strike, according to Reuters.

But reformers counter that teachers should be responsible for helping their students score better on tests, and that current evaluation systems provide no way for ineffective teachers to be identified or removed from classrooms.

Emanuel doubled down on the new evaluation system Monday, as negotiations between CTU and the city dragged on.

"What we can't do is roll back what's essential to improving our quality of education," Emanuel said at the press conference, flanked by children.

He called the strike "totally unnecessary."

While other city and state leaders have pioneered test-based evaluations without prompting strikes, one sticking point that may make Emanuel's reforms more controversial is a lack of money. The school district is facing a $3 billion deficit over the next few years. Former Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was able to overhaul the city's teacher compensation and evaluation system in part by offering big pay increases for teachers who thrived under the new system. But Emanuel has no such leverage.

"The mayor is pushing for dramatic Obama-era teacher quality reforms, but doesn't have a lot of money to help the medicine go down," Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute told Yahoo News.

Union organizer and former social studies teacher Jackson Potter said one issue the teachers are striking over is poor facilities. Teachers are upset that some schools lack playgrounds or libraries, while others convened in "sweltering" August classrooms without the benefit of air conditioning. Meanwhile, the facilities budget for the city has been slashed. Emanuel dismissed this complaint on Monday, saying the teachers aren't actually striking over facilities.

"It's 71 degrees outside," he said. "You don't go on strike for air conditioning."

But the issues leading to the strike have been building for quite a while, said Potter. When current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran Chicago's schools, he pioneered a new aggressive approach of closing down schools whose students performed poorly on tests. Duncan's strategy led some teachers, who felt they were being blamed for teaching in difficult, high-poverty schools, to form a more radical branch of the union, called Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE). The organization has been instrumental in the current strike, and similar groups have formed in other big cities with strong teacher unions, such as New York and Los Angeles, potentially setting the stage for more high-profile strikes in the future.

"I think we're likely to see other cities going down the same road as Chicago," Hess said.

Charter Schools Are Just a Way of Channeling Public Funds to the Top 1%

The Corporate Privatization of Public Education

There has been much public praise for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s efforts to reform public education. However, few scholars have engaged substantively and critically with the organization’s work. While the Gates Foundation is the single largest supporter by far of "choice" initiatives particularly with regard to charter school formation, it is pushing public school privatization through a wide array of initiatives and in conjunction with a number of other foundations. What are the implications for a public system as control over educational policy and priority is concentrated under one of the richest people on the planet in ways that foster de-unionization and teacher de-skilling while homogenizing school models and curriculum? The Gates Foundation and the Future of US "Public" Schools addresses this crucial, unanswered question while investigating the relationships between the Gates Foundation and other think tanks, government, and corporate institutions. - How Bill Gates Plans On Privatizing us Public Schools, The Frustrated Teacher, November 22, 2010

September 27, 2010

Calitics - One of the most important trends afoot right now is the move to privatize as many government services as possible.

Billionaires like Bill Gates, along with hedge funds, are pushing an agenda of privatizing public schools, and funding a PR push in support of that cause with films like "Waiting for Superman" and the NBC "Education Nation" that included a panel with the title "Does Education Need a Katrina?".

This trend is fueled by the desire of the richest Americans to seek new income streams. Instead of spending their cash hoard on innovating new products or businesses that can create jobs and lasting economic activity, they're engaged in a process of rent seeking, which has no productive value. By taking tax dollars that currently provide public services and channeling them to the private sector, which contracts to provide the service at lower cost -- and therefore at lower quality -- these wealthy individuals can add new income streams while also blunting any effort to raise their taxes to provide these services.

It's not just schools that are targeted for privatization, however. As the New York Times reports, Santa Clarita has privatized its library -- even though it wasn't forced to by financial considerations:

A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation -- with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another -- the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort -- and maybe not even then?

"There's this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries," said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company's chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. "Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization."

In his rather blunt and offensive way, Pezzanite actually lays out the stakes pretty clearly. In a country that has turned pursuit of profit into a civic religion, and that since 1980 has argued that all government activity and policy should be oriented around producing corporate profits, it is indeed an open question whether there is any room left for the concept of the government providing services directly to the people, without having to give an investor a cut.

Public libraries have been operating quite effectively and efficiently for over 100 years. The notion that one would privatize the library just so some company can make money was virtually unheard of, at least in California, for the last century. But that was before the era of Reagan, Schwarzenegger, and Whitman.

The privatizers' method is the same: fire all the employees, regardless of how good at their jobs they are, so the company can replace them with cheaper labor, increasing their profits at the expense of quality services and middle-class wages. It's wealth extraction at its finest, the corporate raider having shifted his target from an '80s manufacturing plant to a '10s library.

Why would Santa Clarita go along with this? It's likely that the council are merely outliers, the first ones to make a highly ideological move that will be quickly taken up by right-wing (and some not so right-wing) councils across the state, demanding privatization to suit their ideological agenda and justified by overblown and misleading concerns about pension costs.

It's true that I have more than a passing interest in this topic, as the husband of someone working at a public library. But it's the bigger principle that really matters here. Public services should be provided for the benefit of the public -- and not for the benefit of some company's bottom line.

When profit becomes the primary motive, all else is sacrificed to it. It's not what most Californians want for their state and their future, but unless we fight back hard, they will privatize everything, and keep the profits while we get stuck with the risks -- and the losses.

Obama’s Neoliberal Stance on Charter Schools

March 21, 2011

Alternet.org - Of the last five presidents, Obama has clearly been the staunchest ally of the school privatization movement. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Our first black president has already clearly established his neoliberal credentials, in expanding Bush’s war on terror into Pakistan, Yemen and Libya and increasing his predecessor’s measly $700 billion in Wall Street bailouts to $12.5 trillion.

In addition to generous increases to charter school funding every year, the Obama administration also included a provision in the 2009 stimulus package forcing states to liberalize and/or expand their charter school programs or miss out in $100 billion in public school stimulus funding.

Many states, which are already closing schools and laying off teachers, have a cap on charter school formation because they can’t afford further decreases in their public school budget. Many feel the failure of charter schools to improve achievement scores doesn’t justify establishing even more of them, given the additional cuts and sacrifices this would impose on public schools. Many, such as Ohio, have had serious problems (owing to lack of public oversight) with fraud and corruption in privately run charter schools.

However, at present all states without legislation authorizing the formation of charter schools will have to pass it -- and all those with funding caps will have to remove them – or miss out on badly needed stimulus funding.

Arne Duncan’s Record in Chicago

Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools to head the Dept of Education, suggests states will continue to be under enormous pressure to de-fund public schools -- and that many more will close. While running Chicago schools, Duncan -- in collaboration with Mayor Daley’s office and Chicago’s corporate elite -- pursued an aggressive school privatization agenda. In 2004, this included an attempt to close 20 out of 22 schools in a low income minority neighborhood. The effort was clearly linked to the mayor’s and property developers efforts to “gentrify” the neighborhood -- to force out minority residents and glam up their properties for re-sale to white upper middle class professionals. With all their neighborhood schools closing, low income residents would have no choice but to leave.

Fortunately militant protests by residents stopped the arbitrary school closures. However Duncan then preceded to implement a draconian decree under Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act ordering immediate closure (with no probationary period) of schools where students failed to pass standardized tests. Duncan also made it clear that these schools would immediately be turned over to private charter school operators funded by grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates and WalMart family foundation).

Obama and Arne Duncan

The Role of the Corporate Media

It should also be no surprise that the corporate controlled media is beating the drums for the neoliberal agenda to privatize schools. As Danny Weil outlines in “Corporate School Hype and How It’s Managed,” NPR, CNN, PBS, 20/20 and Oprah Winfrey are all guilty of staging “informercials” promoting school privatization via the formation of charter schools as a solution to the “crisis” in public schools. No pro-public school advocates are invited to challenge the assertions presented, and there is no disclosure of ideological or financial (as in the case of controversial civil rights leader Al Sharpton) ties to right wing think tanks and school privatization proponents (see http://www.counterpunch.org/weil08262009.html).

The Mind Trust: The Celebrity-Corporate-Government Plan to Privatize Indiana Education

March 22, 2011

Fire Dog Lake - When former NBC Today Show co-host Jane Pauley walked out onto a stage in her birth city, Indianapolis, a year ago, some in the audience, including Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and former mayor Bart Peterson, understood what was behind Pauley’s show of empathy for Indiana’s school children, even though it may have been hidden to those there to see a celebrity.

Pauley spoke with pride of her son Ross—who had just joined the teaching staff of a charter school—and how she heard in Washington about the great things happening in the school reform movement back in her former hometown.

As member of the Board of the Mind Trust, a nonprofit school reform group in Indianapolis which has over $12 million to attack public education, Pauley was there to help sell the corporate privatization of public education. This coming May, in fact, Pauley will even join New York Times’ David Brooks (a “Quiet Revolution” quack) onstage at the Mind Trust’s “Grow What Works: Campaign to Accelerate Education Reform.”

The Mind Trust is the product of President and former Indianapolis Democratic mayor Bart Peterson and CEO David Harris, the mayor’s first Charter School Director in Indianapolis. In 2001, the Indiana legislature passed a charter school law which made Peterson the first mayor to have the authority to charter schools in the country. For their various programs, Harris, Peterson, and the Lilly Endowment-funded Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) at the University of Indianapolis received $11.3 million from the Gates Foundation. To the Indianapolis Charter Schools Facilities Fund, a loan program which operated from 2005 to 2009, the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) added another $1 million.

Bart Peterson is currently the Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Communications for Eli Lilly and Company, the mega-drug company where Mitch Daniels was Senior Vice President before joining the Bush administration. In fact, current or former Lilly members onboard with the Mind Trust include Alecia DeCoudreaux, General Counsel at Lilly USA, Mind Trust President Claire Fiddian-Green, and Anne Shane, Community Development and Education Consultant to the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The Lilly Endowment, the Ruth Lilly Philanthropic Foundation, and the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation all significantly fund the Mind Trust.

Mind Trust’s Board of Directors is stacked with other Indiana corporate leaders. It includes Indianapolis Power and Light Company (IPALCO) CEO Ann Murtlow, who previously worked as an AES Corporation liaison at the same time Mitch Daniels was an IPALCO board member, then joined IPALCO in 2002 (for the AES-IPALCO connections to charter school scandals, see my article here). Murtlow is also on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Board of Directors, a member of the Board of Directors of Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, and now the Senior Vice Chair of the Mind Trust.

Through its Venture Fund and with help from the Lilly Endowment, in 2008 the Mind Trust spent $2 million to recruit Teach for America to Indiana. Nationally, Teach for America has been under much scrutiny, and the Indiana branch is also drowning in controversy. Tina Bennett (the wife of Tony, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction) recently quit her job as assistant director of Teach for America at Marian University, a Catholic school that was awarded $500,000 from the Indiana government to train future school principals, even though many other more qualified universities applied and were denied. Daniel J. Elsener, Marian’s president, also serves on the Indiana State Board of Education. When asked to comment on his wife’s many conflicts of interests with charter schools, Tony Bennett, in April, arrogantly told a South Bend School Corporation audience:

“I see no conflict. I invite choice.”

He, however, had no comment on the recent corruptions in Dennis Bakke’s Imagine Schools.

School Choice is indeed the buzzword of another Mind Trust recruit, Stand for Children. Originating in Portland, Oregon, Stand for Children used $242,300 from the Mind Trust and $150,000 from the Joyce Foundation to sweep into Indiana and lobby for Senate Bill 1, the legislation which makes it easier to fire teachers and make annual teacher evaluations based primarily on student performance, or the ISTEP test.

As Steve Hinnefeld has noted, Stand for Children lists the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association address for its office and has “two high-priced Statehouse lobbyists and a ton of positive publicity courtesy of Indianapolis Star columnist Matthew Tully.” Linda Erlinger, Stand for Children’s executive director in Indiana, previously served as Development Director with Teach for America and as Manager of Applications of Research with the Chicago Panel on School Policy. Thus, it is not surprising that Arne Duncan lauds Stand for Children in a Mind Trust press release.

True to the conservative-corporate propaganda plan, another Mind Trust spin-off, Teach Plus, recruits young teachers, trains them to question seniority in the teaching profession, and pits them against older, more experienced teachers who, instead of being criticized, should be looked up to and learned from. Started by Mind Trust Education Entrepreneur Fellow Celine Coggin (who was nominated by Paul Reville, Massachusetts Secretary of Education and charter “Innovation Schools” advancer), Teach Plus hires people to write studies claiming that once the governor closes down low-performing schools in Indiana, lazy senior teachers will replace the jobs of younger ones at other public schools in the district, what they refer to as the “Domino Effect.” In their anti-seniority attack, they have $4 million from the Gates Foundation to infiltrate six cities over three years, including Boston. The Teach Plus fellows in Indianapolis also focus on “advancing a reform agenda based on improving teacher evaluation and staffing policies,” or to press for an agenda where teachers are based primarily on how well their students do on the state ISTEP test.

Proudly, the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction has no qualms about promoting the Mind Trust’s Fellowship program which led to Teach Plus. In his March 21, 2011, bulk-email to teachers and others, Bennett includes a link to apply for one of the group’s Education Entrepreneur Fellowships. Along with members of the Mind Trust, Bennett has even hyped the Broad and Gates funded anti-public education film, Waiting for Superman, in an interview with Inside Indiana Business’s Gerry Dick.

With Bennett, business, the Indy Star, and a former NBC Today Show anchor on board, the Mind Trust and Teach Plus aren’t having problems landing gigs, either. Last year, Indianapolis charter school teacher James Larson appeared on the heavily Broad and Gates Foundation-funded Today Show’s Education Nation. Larson was a Teach Plus Indianapolis Teaching Policy Fellow. In his discussion of this, Larson writes:

The first thing Siri and Marcus [founders of Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School in Indianapolis, where Larson teaches) told me in my job interview is that Tindley teachers are held accountable -- not only by parents and students, but also by the administrators themselves.

You would think that would be typical of all schools, but unfortunately it’s not. Too many teachers are simply allowed to close their doors when the bell rings. Too many administrators close their doors, too.

Larson graduated from DePauw in 2005 (as did Siri and Marcus, at some point) and started at Tindley in 2008, so he’s not seen much of what teachers and administrators do in the public schools in Indiana, if anything. Whether he is being duped into buying the argument for privatization of public schools or he is a part of the scheme is hard to tell. Let’s just hope others don’t fall in line.

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