Bloomberg/Klein Spend $5 Million To Recruit New Teachers While Laying Off 8,500 Current Ones

Explain the rationale of this:

The city may lay off 8,500 teachers, but education officials still want approval for a contract of up to $5 million a year to recruit even more teachers.

The agency's Panel for Educational Policy will vote later this month on the hefty contract, but already critics are questioning the need to spend money to recruit during a time of layoffs.

"We should put a freeze on any spending related to new hiring. We should not even be going through the expense of negotiating a contract now," said Patrick Sullivan, the panel's Manhattan representative.

Since 2000, the New Teacher Project has contracted with the city to recruit New York City Teaching Fellows. For this school year, the group received $2.8 million for recruiting 705 teachers.

You know what? I'll explain the rationale for this.

Bloomberg and Klein want to make sure their cronies at the New Teacher Project get paid off despite the severe economic conditions that Bloomberg's says will require 8,500 layoffs in schools.

Also, Bloomberg and Klein want veteran teachers who are too "expensive" off the payroll, but you can only move vets out by bringing cheaper "newbies" in.

Thus we have the city spending $5 million to recruit new teachers even as they try and lay off 8,500.

Outrageous.

But not a surprise.

Newsweek for Sale

Kaplan Test Prep, which owns the Washington Post Company, is putting teacher-bashing Newsweek up for sale:

The Washington Post Company said on Wednesday that it was putting Newsweek magazine up for sale, raising questions about the future of the publication and whether the newsweekly format still had a place in today’s fragmented media market.

...

The move was not entirely unexpected, Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham, said.

“In the sense that we are all in an existential crisis, it is not what I would call a stunning decision,” Mr. Meacham said in an interview. “You would have to have been hopelessly Pollyannaish not to have suspected that there were fundamental shifts ahead.”

Mr. Meacham said he did not know whether Newsweek would work as an all-digital publication, or as digital with a print component, but, he said, “I decline to accept that Newsweek in some form does not have a role to play going forward.”

It was unclear who might bid for the magazine. Bloomberg L.P., which just bought BusinessWeek, was not exploring a purchase, a spokeswoman, Judith Czelusniak said. Mr. Meacham said he was considering putting together an investor group to buy the magazine.

Newsweek lost $28.1 million in 2009, compared with a loss of $15.4 million a year earlier. Revenue fell to $165.5 million, from $227.4 million in 2008, as income from advertising and subscriptions eroded.

Just last month, Newsweek ran a cover story that stated "bad teachers" who couldn't improve the test scores of their students need to be held accountable and fired.

Ironic that Newsweek writers Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert were writing the "accountability" story about teachers and schools even as the owners of the magazine - a test prep company - were holding their own accountability moment for the writers, editors and staff of the dying magazine.

But fair's fair - since Newsweek writers and editors think teachers need to be held accountable for the data and scores of their students, then Newsweek writers and editors need to be held accountable for the revenue losses for their magazine.

Going from losing $15.4 million in 2008 to losing $28.1 million in 2009 is not a positive trajectory.

And the publisher of Newsweek says he expects to lose more money in 2010.

Given those numbers, the "accountability folks" at Newsweek clearly need to be held accountable.

The magazine needs to be closed and the staff fired.

Certainly that's how Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert and Jon Meacham would want it if Newsweek were a high school in, say, Central Falls, Rhode Island instead of a news weekly in Manhattan.

So buh-bye, fellows.

See you on the unemployment line.

Regular Blogging To Resume Soon

Had a little flood from the weather yesterday. Hoping to soon have life back to "normal," but it's been a chaotic few days.

NY Times Front Page Story Says Charters "No Better, And In Many Cases, Worse" Than Traditional Public Schools

The article comes the day before Mayor Moneybags and Governor Sexual Harassment Is Only A Crime When It's Done By Somebody Other Than My Chief Aide try and get the charter cap lifted from 200 to 465:

For all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one-fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were “significantly worse.”

Although “charter schools have become a rallying cry for education reformers,” the report, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, warned, “this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well” as students in traditional schools.

Researchers for this study and others pointed to a successful minority of charter schools — numbering perhaps in the hundreds — and these are the ones around which celebrities and philanthropists rally, energized by their narrowing of the achievement gap between poor minority students and white students.

But with the Obama administration offering the most favorable climate yet for charter schools, the challenge of reproducing high-flying schools is giving even some advocates pause. Academically ambitious leaders of the school choice movement have come to a hard recognition: raising student achievement for poor urban children — what the most fervent call a new civil rights campaign — is enormously difficult and often expensive.

And yet - despite the mixed record at best of charters (and actually miserable record in many cases), Obama, Moneybags, Paterson, Duncan, Klein et al. are pushing for more and more charter schools.

So are their backers in the financial and celebrity worlds (the John Legends and Stings and Katie Courics of the world.)

Clearly the push is NOT about educational quality.

It is about busting the unions and getting access to all that yummy yummy public education money for the for-profit charters school operators.

It is about deregulation and privatization of the public school system.

But, hypocrites that they are, they call it a "civil rights action."

Uh, huh.

The same people who want to lay teachers off, increase class sizes, stick kids in bathrooms that they call "classrooms," and cut after school programs, all the while hiring more deputy chancellors and adding more central bureaucracy that costs a few million bucks, do NOT care about civil rights.

No - their agenda is a corporate one.

I Write The State Senate

Dear Senators,

As a veteran teacher in a traditional public school that has been both A rated by the NYCDOE and received a "Well Developed" designation by the NYCDOE Quality Review, I am urging you to NOT vote to lift the charter cap without increasing the accountability measures on charter school operators.

There are MANY examples of charter school non-accountability and fraud in the news - including the recent NY Times article on Imagine Schools (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/education/24imagine.html), the city controller's report in Philadelphia that found financial mismanagement, fraud and criminal activity in 13 charter schools including one running a nightclub in the school on weekends (http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/91791679.html), and in the Daily News where reporters found many NYC charter operators engaging in nepotism and conflicts of interest (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/04/22/2010-04-22_charters_family_plans_nepotism_conflict_of_interest_find_a_home_at_privately_run.html?page=1).

Charter schools MUST face the same financial accountability and scrutiny that traditional public schools have. Yet for some reason, Peter Murphy and other charter advocates say that charter schools are already "the most accountable entities in the Western Hemisphere" (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/04/22/2010-04-22_charter_school_champions_critics_clash_at_volatile_public_hearing_on_oversight_m.html)and should be exempt from an outside auditor of their finances and academic records.

The evidence is quite clear that raising the charter cap with the current bill will lead to more fraud, more non-accountability, and more nepotism. In addition, charters will continue to refuse to educate ALL students and take only students who score well on tests and behave well in school while traditional public schools educate ALL students regardless of academic skill level, ability, or behavioral issue.

For too long, now charter schools have enjoyed cache from the politicians and press, favoritism from education officials like Joel Klein and Arne Duncan, and millions of dollars from the hedge fund industry and Wall Street. But they have NOT played fairly by refusing to educate all students or by opening their books to outside scrutiny. In this ear when politicians of both parties say public schools and public school teachers MUST be held accountable, I say that charter school operators and their schools MUST be held accountable too.

The New York State Senate will be making a mistake by voting to raise the charter cap without additional accountability safeguards on charter operators and their schools. In addition, charter operators MUST educate ALL students and provide detailed records and statistics of those who are discharged and the reasons why they were dumped from their schools.

As a teacher at Fashion Industries High School in Chelsea, I will make certain that my colleagues know EXACTLY how their state senators voted on this bill. In a year when there is a lot of anger toward incumbents, you can be sure teachers at traditional public school will be mobilizing to hold politicians who harm the interests of traditional public schools accountable.

Sincerely,

_____________
Teacher of English
UFT/AFT Member
Registered Democrat

Charter Cap Bill Vote On Monday

Time to mobilize and make calls.

Mayor Moneybags and Governor Sexual Harassment Is Not A Crime are going to be very happy if this charter cap bill is passed in the State Senate.

Mobilization worked in Florida (even Gail Collins noticed) and it can work here.

Let these state senators know that lifting the charter cap without providing any outside accountability on charter operators is NOT acceptable.

Here is a list of all state senators. Find yours, make a call, and leave a message.

Here is where you can email.

Let's mobilize.

You can be sure the charter school operators and advocates are.

I've already left a message for Tom Duane's office and let him know teachers at my school are watching how he votes on this.

These state senators need to know that accountability is not just for teachers.

It's for politicians who vote against the interests of traditional public schools and teachers at those schools too.

Heckuva Job, Barack

From Political Wire:

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced."

-- President Obama, quoted by Think Progress on April 2, 2010.

Just 18 days later a rig operated 41 miles off the Louisiana coast exploded and caused what may be the largest oil spill in history.

The picture above is one of those technologically-advanced oil rigs that generally don't spill anymore.

It is STILL spilling oil as I write this.

They haven't figured out how to shut the rig off.

It is leaking 5,000 barrels of oil per day.

Spill, baby, spill.

St. Vincent's RIP

Saint Vincent's Hospital officially goes out of business at 8 AM today after 160 years of treating patients.

All 3,500 employees will lose their jobs.

The lower west side of Manhattan will be without a full-service hospital.

On the plus side, NYU will have some buildings they can take over if Mayor Bloomberg's gift of Governor's Island to the university isn't enough space for their planned future expansions.

18,000 Students Support Teachers In New Jersey

Every once in a while there is a story about education that actually warms my heart.

18,000 students walked out of New Jersey classrooms yesterday to protest Governor Christie's budget cuts to education.

They carried signs like "We are the future" and "We love our teachers."

They marched to City Hall in Newark to chant "No More Budget Cuts!"

They made their voices heard.

They think Chris Christie and the other education deform wankers demonizing teachers and teachers unions are WRONG. They think the "fiscal conservatives" trying to balance state budgets with education cuts while refusing to raise taxes on people making over $400,000 a year are WRONG.

But of course Governor Christie didn't hear any of it:

Michael Drewniak, the governor’s press secretary, released a statement on Tuesday saying that students belonged in the classroom. “It is also our firm hope that the students were motivated by youthful rebellion or spring fever,” Mr. Drewniak said, “and not by encouragement from any one-sided view of the current budget crisis in New Jersey.”

Spring fever? Youthful rebellion?

When tea partiers show up in Washington on Tax Day to protest having to pay taxes (even though we now pay the lowest level of federal taxes in generations), you never hear a Republican say "Gee, I hope they're just inspired by spring fever or youthful rebellion."

Instead you hear how the tea partiers are channeling Tom Paine and Sam Adams and other "patriots" who protested unfair tax policies back in the day.

But when students - 18,000 of them - come out to protest Governor Christie's budget cuts to schools and demonizing of teachers, those same Republicans say "Oh, it's just spring fever...it's just youthful rebellion...they'll be back to playing video games tomorrow..."

Well, maybe. But maybe not:

Not every school had students walk out. Nancy Dries, a spokeswoman for the top-ranked Millburn district, which has used surplus money to avoid major cuts, said it was “business as usual” there.

But in many other places, students came to school ready to make a political statement. Emma Wolin, a junior at Columbia High, walked out of second-period Spanish with several classmates, even though the school had warned that they would face detention

They certainly did make a political statement yesterday. I hope Christie and Obama and Duncan and all the other eduwankers heard it.

But I doubt they did.

There will have to be more political statements made in the future.

We will start this November by letting Democrats who sign on to Obama's education plans to close schools, turn them into for-profit charters and scapegoat/fire thousands of teachers know how we feel about those policies.

The mood is already the most anti-incumbent since 1994.

Just wait until all those teachers who voted for Democrats sit out this fall.

I Think We Just Might Have To Have An Accountability Moment

Political Wire reports that President Accountability has rolled out his strategy for the 2010 midterm elections:

In in a new video, President Obama lays out the 2010 election strategy for Democrats.

It essentially boils down to re-engaging the voters who propelled him to the White House in 2008. Obama also warns that only by keeping the House and Senate under Democratic control will he be able to pursue his agenda.

President Accountability says only by keeping the House and the Senate under Democratic control will he be able to pursue his agenda!

Who wants to break the news to President Accountability that all those teachers who voted for him and walked door to door for him and worked the GOTV machine for him on Election Day '08 and sent him their hard-earned cash WON'T be doing ANY of that this time around?

Not after Race to the Top.

Not after Central Falls, Rhode Island.

Not after his proposals in No Child Left Behind Jr. - the Obama Years.

Not after the administration encouraged that abomination of a bill down in Florida that would have banned teacher tenure and forced all teachers to take 50% of their compensation in merit pay tied to test scores and then didn't even have the guts to say they were FOR IT on the record.

Not this time.

Who wants to break the news to President Accountability that we want NOTHING to do with his agenda?

The number at President Accountability's temporary house is 202-456-1111.

Emails can be sent here.

Normally I say be polite when you call, but this time I say DO NOT be polite.

Be as mad as you ought to be by his pro-privatization/anti-teachers union policies and statements.

Let 'em know EXACTLY why you're not voting for Dems or sending them money or canvassing for them.

Call your senators and congressmen and let them know too.

With Obama at the lowest level of approval in his presidency (see here and here for the latest) and with health care "reform" very unpopular, Dems are going to be VERY open to teachers and union members telling them EXACTLY why we're NOT voting for them.

They might even stop taking teachers unions for granted if we make them pay a political price for Obama's policies.

So start calling.

Tell President Accountability it is time for his own "accountability moment."

Now There's A Bill I Can Support

The NY Post reports today in their phony WAR ON CHARTERS series that a bill has been introduced that would force charter schools to admit the same kinds of students that traditional public schools do:

Charter schools that don't enroll as many kids with disabilities or limited English as do traditional public schools would be shut down under a bill introduced by a top Democrat in the state Senate, The Post has learned.

State Senate Conference leader John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) has quietly introduced legislation that would revoke the state license of charter schools that don't meet a quota for enrolling special-needs kids over two consecutive years.

"A charter school must enroll the same or a greater percentage of students with disabilities and limited-English-proficient students when compared to the enrollment figures for such students in the school district in which the charter school is located," the bill states.

The bill -- which mirrors recommendations made by the United Federation of Teachers in January -- also has the backing of Assemblyman Alan Masiel (D-Brooklyn) and 19 other Assembly Democrats.

Just as charter operators do not want any outside independent oversight of the financing and management of schools, they also are opposed to any regulations regarding the type of students they enroll.

Because they know the advantage they have - enroll who they want, dump them when they no longer want them.

Charter Schools: The Most Accountable Entities In The Western Hemisphere

The NY Post has been running a series the past few weeks called "War on Charters."

The gist of the series is that the valiant folks running charter schools are up against big, powerful, wealthy forces trying to destroy them.

Today's article is typical - charters are wonderful, they have smaller class sizes, the buildings and facilities are nicer than regular public schools, the kids are engaged in learning, parents are involved - why would anybody want to be opposed to the charter school movement?

Here's my favorite quotation:

"Anyiha goes to a school where classrooms are small, her parents are involved in her homework, she studies violin and piano -- she's engaged, and she wants to learn. This is what we all should have, and it's needed, especially in black communities," Mcbean said.

Indeed, it is what we should have in every school, especially in the black community, and yet we don't.

Of course charter advocates say it is the big bad teachers unions that are the problem - just bust the unions and destroy their stranglehold on public education and every school will be just like the one little Anyiha attends.

But on the face of it, that's laughable. If the powers that be wanted every public school to look like the one little Anyiha attends, they would actually FUND them.

But they don't. Because they're not looking to actually improve the quality of education, they're looking to bust the union and privatize public education (as they have privatized and deregulated every other major part of American life since the Reagan 80's - from the way we fight our wars with Halliburton running things to the way quarterly results on Wall Street seem to be the only gauge of success these days.)

So let's bust some of those myths the Post has been running with the past few weeks and in the process explain just why Rupert Murdoch and other charter advocates are so scared by any outside accountability of the charter school movement (and they must be terrified, actually, because Murdoch ran 8 pro-charter, anti-union stories on the same day State Senator Bill Perkins held hearings on charters.)

First off, charter schools are not tiny powerless entities up against big powerful wealthy forces. Quite the opposite - they are the big powerful wealthy forces, backed by the hedge fund industry and Wall Street, with access to hundreds of millions of investment dollars across the country.

Next, they have some very powerful political advocates looking out for their needs (unlike the regular public schools.) Here in NYC, charter school managers like Eva Moskowitz have direct access to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and can get him to do things like close other public schools to give the charters more room or invite him to poker tournament fund raisers with all the hedge fund managers and Wall Street execs taking some time off from shorting the mortgage market to help raise some cash for charter schools.

Let us also not forget that the mayor, the governor, the president and the secretary of education are all huge fans of charter schools and have been doing all they can to spread the movement far and wide while also doing all they can to hurt unionized teachers (think Central Falls, Rhode Island.)

Finally, let us remember that the reason charters have so many motivated children with motivated parents or guardians is because the movement ONLY accepts motivated children with motivated parents. Show yourself to NOT be motivated and you get counseled out of your charter school really, really quickly (and you disappear from the state stas on schools too.)The same goes for scoring well on tests - score low consistently and the charter school will counsel you out (or have enough non-motivated students with low test scores - like one year at the Harlem Children's Zone - and they may just close down an entire grade. Helps with the overall statistics, you know.)

So the Post can say war has been declared on charter schools and the big bad teachers unions are out to destroy the tiny powerless intrepids just trying to give small classes, good teachers and state of the art facilities to underprivileged kids of color all they want.

But of course it is all jive. What they really want to do is bust the unions and open up public education to private enterprise and for-profit school management companies like Imagine Schools.

The Times ran a four page article on Imagine Schools and found that the charter management company

has elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.

The arrangements, they say, allow Imagine to use public money with little oversight. “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions,” said Marc Dean Millot, publisher of the report K-12 Leads and a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, a trade association, now defunct, for the charter school movement.

“Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction,” he said.

Imagine is a private for-profit company that calls itself non-profit and runs schools with public money - making millions in the process.

Imagine charges exorbitant rates to its schools for "rent" - according to the Times article, a charter school in Nevada called 100 Academy pays 40% of the $3.6 million it receives from the state to Imagine Schools for rent.

That's an awful lot of rent money, isn't it?

In addition, they charge a fee to "manage" the school, leaving very little left over to actual run the school and educate the children.

How's that for leaving no for-profit charter school management company behind?

In Philadelphia, a city controller's report found after a year-long investigation

repeated examples of complex real estate arrangements in which charters leased or rented facilities from related nonprofit organizations, excessive salaries for chief executive officers, compliant boards whose members are handpicked by school chiefs, and rampant conflicts of interest.

The controller also concluded that the Philadelphia School District had failed to monitor charter schools, leaving it and taxpayers "extremely vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse."

Here is New York City, politicians found charter schools and move them to land owned by political donors, even if that means sticking the kids in trailers on barren, undeveloped land near the ocean.

Or charter operators pay themselves close to $400,000 dollars to "manage" three charter schools with fewer than 1000 students - a much higher salary than principals in regular public schools make. In fact, it is a higher salary than the schools chancellor makes or the secretary of education makes.

Or charter operators dole out the nepotism and conflicts of interest to family and friends as the Daily News reported on this week:

At some New York City charter schools, it's a family affair.

A Daily News investigation has found some charters hiring wives, husbands and children of school officials and board trustees as vendors, teachers aides and consultants.

Employees of public schools face penalties and suspension for even minor conflicts of interest, such as the teacher fined $1,250 last week for lending her parking permit to her husband.

But at some charters - which are publicly funded but privately run - there's little worry about bringing family members on board.

At the hearing on charter school financing held by Bill Perkins this week, charter advocate and New York Charter Schools Association Policy Director Peter Murphy said that charter schools are the "most accountable entities in the Western hemisphere."

Given the financial improprieties found in charters all across the nation, the test score manipulation schools like the Harlem Children's Zone engage in by getting rid of an entire class of students when the test scores aren't high enough, the financial predation of the charter school management companies, and the nepotism and conflicts of interest so many charter operators engage in, charter schools are actually the LEAST accountable entities in the Western Hemisphere.

Only the derivatives markets and hedge fund industry seem to be less accountable than charter schools these days.

And look at the mess they've created.

Why Is Bloomberg Praising Mulgrew?

Seriously, this is troubling, though given the history of the UFT lately, not unexpected:

Bloomberg heaped praise on UFT President Mike Mulgrew, whose union is under fire from charter school advocates who believe it blocked efforts to raise the cap in Albany in advance of the state’s “Race to the Top” application (which failed).

The mayor called Mulgrew “just spectacular” and “tough as nails,” but also someone who “understands we have to move forward.”

Any idea why Bloomberg is publicly praising Mulgrew?

Christie Wildly Unpopular

If you read George Will's slobbering column on Chris Christie vs. the NJEA yesterday, you'd be under the impression that Chris Christie is beloved by nearly all in New Jersey for taking on the teachers union, slashing state aid to school districts and forcing thousands of teacher layoffs across the state.

Yeah, that would be the impression that you would get from Will's piece, but it would be wrong:

NEW JERSEY (WABC) -- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been in office for just three months, and a new eyewitness news poll shows voters are not giving him any kind of a honeymoon as he presses for budget cuts.

Only 33% of New Jersey residents approve the job Christie is doing as governor.

Nearly twice the number, 63% disapprove.

The telephone poll by SurveyUSA has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%.

33% approval is below the Bush line though not quite at the Paterson line.

Nonetheless, Christie is wildly unpopular in this state for refusing to cut taxes on millionaires while cutting the budgets on everybody else - including canceling the property tax rebate many people across the state get.

He's got more than 3 years to get that approval up, but given his glee at screwing powerful constituencies like the teachers union, his willingness to screw middle and working class homeowners so that his millionaire and billionaire buddies can avoid paying their fair share of taxes and his overall losing personality (he really does just seem like an asshole and a blowhard), I think Chris Christie has "one term" written all over him.

But we'll see - lots of stuff can happen in three years.

Bloomberg Defends Using Overseas Tax Havens To Avoid Paying Taxes

Mayor Moneybags says taxes are for the little people, not for the rich and powerful:

NEW YORK — Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday said there's nothing wrong with his money managers investing hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore tax havens, defending it as a practical way to make more money for his philanthropic foundation.

The billionaire mayor's foundation has transferred some $400 million to offshore funds in widely known tax-sheltering countries like the Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Mauritius and Bermuda, according to the Bloomberg Family Foundation's tax forms.

...

The practice is legal and not uncommon, but it could be considered to conflict with the spirit of Bloomberg's oft-repeated message that it is crucial to the financial health of New York City and the nation to keep companies and their economic activities in the United States, funding the tax base that pays for government services.

"We need more people here paying taxes and when they make money, they pay more taxes," he said this week.

Uh, huh - except they find all kinds of ways to NOT pay taxes.

Like when they're rich and wealthy and have access to overseas tax havens.

Bloomberg is a hypocritical scumbag.

He first got caught lying about the tax havens to the AP.

When asked about the practice of overseas tax havens, he said he didn't know anything about his investments, they are all done through a blind trust.

But the AP reporter pressed and noted that Bloomberg has SIGNED HIS NAME to tax returns saying this was where the money was.

Then and only then did Bloomberg admit to the practice.

BTW, do not follow his lead unless you are a filthy rich crony of his because he'll make sure he comes down hard on you and gets the city's tax money plus interest and fees and perhaps even jail time for you.

But for himself and Steven Rattner and other really really rich people, investing in overseas tax havens and hedge funds on mysterious tropical islands with post office boxes for offices is perfectly fine and dandy.

In fact, it's good business.

Daily News Covers Conflicts Of Interest At Charter Schools

Today Bill Perkins is holding hearings on charter school oversight.

Charter proponents say they already have more oversight than regular public schools and should be left alone.

But as we have seen in Philadelphia where 13 charter schools have been investigated for criminal activity, fraud and corruption and 9 are being investigated by the US attorney's office, oversight often turns up funky things.

Here in NYC, the Daily News found lots of conflicts of interest at charter schools - things like principals hiring family members for services at the school and paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars - while pointing out that

Employees of public schools face penalties and suspension for even minor conflicts of interest, such as the teacher fined $1,250 last week for lending her parking permit to her husband.

But of course charter proponents continue to say NO outsight oversight is necessary.

It will stifle innovation.

If by innovation, they mean stealing, I think they're right.

A Real Emergency

The NY Times ran an article this morning about how the 2010-2011 school year is shaping up to be the most "austere" in decades, as many districts are being forced to cut teachers, programs, and even school days in order to meet their budgets.

Secretary Arne himself weighed in on the crisis:

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan estimated that state budget cuts imperiled 100,000 to 300,000 public school jobs. In an interview on Monday, he said the nation was flirting with “education catastrophe,” and urged Congress to approve additional stimulus funds to save school jobs.

“We absolutely see this as an emergency,” Mr. Duncan said.

Now the Obama administration have over $3 billion sitting around from the first stimulus bill that Duncan and Obama have put into the Race to the Top competition, but they refuse to give it to states unless they "innovate" schools with programs like replacing teachers' salaries with merit pay programs, tying teachers' evaluations to test scores, adding longer school days and school years and building expensive "data-tracking" systems in order to collect, collate and analyze student and teacher performance data.

In fact, the two states that won the first round of the RttT competition are using most of the extra federal money for computer systems to track data, not to keep teachers on the payroll or lower class sizes.

So when Duncan says states are facing economic catastrophe and he thinks Congress should appropriate more funds to help them, you can be certain that those funds, even if appropriated by Congress, will only be available to the most "innovative" of states.

They will come with lots of strings attached.

And the strings will require states to use the extra money not to keep teachers in classrooms or after school programs going but to purchase data tracking systems and put merit pay programs into place.

It is a real emergency these days in public education, but not only because times are hard and budgets and jobs are being slashed in districts all across the country.

It's a real emergency because the corporate whores running the country do not give a shit about any of that and only see this as an opportunity to force permanent "education reforms" they want onto schools all across the country.

Journalism

Not much of it at the NY Post where they have three, count 'em, three (no link - go find them yourself if you want, but I'm not providing Murdoch with any extra revenue hits today) anti-Bill Perkins articles.

One of them actually starts with the sentence "Why Does Bill Perkins hate kids?"

Perkins is a state senator from Harlem who used to be pro-charter school but has since seen how charters skim off the cream of the crop of students in his district, suck up much of the money and space and leave regular public schools with what is left.

So he has decided that charter schools need to be better regulated, their finances need to be audited by outside independent sources to make sure they are doing things on the up and up and the cozy relationships between some charter operators like Eva Moskowitz and some public officials like Joel Klein need to be examined a little more closely.

He's not saying that charter schools need to be abolished, just that they need to be better regulated and should be forced to play by the same rules that public schools have to be play by (including financing and space rules.)

So he's decided to hold public hearings to shine a light on the doings of charter schools and their operators. He has also introduced legislation to regulate charter school financing and creation a little more than currently happens now.

For that, charter school proponents have made him Public Enemy #1 and the Post is attacking him today with THREE articles today.

He must be on to something for the Post to be going at him with full guns ablazing, saying he hates kids and all that jazz.

Don't GS Me, Man

Via Barry at The Big Picture, a new use for the term "Goldman Sachs":

The term “GS”, now entering the popular lexicon as a verb, meaning to lie AND make money from doing so, as opposed to “BS” – which is just to lie without the benefit of compensation. -- Richard Ambrose

I think we can use the "GS" term when we talk about Klein and Bloomberg and pretty much anything they say about education.

As in "Klein is GSing us again with this 'kill seniority' jive."

The Crooks In Washington Play Golf With The Crooks On Wall Street

I don't usually add pictures to blog posts at this blog, but that picture to the left is too emblematic to NOT put up.

That is Barack Obama last summer playing golf with the Chairman and CEO of UBS, Robert Wolf.

Obama invited Wolf to play golf while vacationing at Martha's Vineyard.

That Obama himself invited Wolf to play golf matters for a number of reasons.

The most obvious, of course, is that a president playing golf with a financial CEO is not exactly the CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN jive Obama and his propaganda meisters who spin for him sold during the 2008 election season.

The second is that the bank Wolf heads, UBS, had just settled the largest offshore tax evasion case in U.S. history, admitting to fraud and paying $780 million dollars to the U.S. treasury, a few months before Obama invited Wolf to play 18 holes.

The third reason is that UBS had just been charged by the New Hampshire securities regulator for "dishonest and unethical" practices in selling notes from the now-defunct Lehman Brothers, causing New Hampshire investors $2.5 million in losses. Those charges came before the golf game with President Accountability on Martha's Vineyard. Just as Goldman Sachs was selling toxic crap to investors without telling them it was crap and betting against it (and was just charged by the SEC with fraud for those actions), UBS was selling garbage and conning its customers and making billions off the deals.

Since that golf game, UBS, along with JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, have been charged with fraud linked to the sale of derivatives to the city of Milan. Here are the details of the Milan case. Notice how similar they sound to the allegations made by New Hampshire state officials or the details of the SEC case against the Goldman Sachs VP charged with fraud on Friday:

Prosecutor Robledo alleges the London units of the four banks misled Milan on the economic advantage of a financing package that included the swaps and that they earned 101 million euros in hidden fees.

He also claims the banks violated U.K. securities rules by failing to inform Milan in writing that for the swap deal the city was a counterparty to the lenders rather than a customer. Banks abiding by the rules of the Financial Services Authority are required to shield customers from conflicts of interest and provide them with clear and fair information that isn’t misleading.

Officials for the FSA in London didn’t have an immediate comment.

The prosecutor, who seized assets from the banks equal to their share of the alleged profit, is claiming JPMorgan charged about 45 million euros in commissions that were hidden from the municipality, while Deutsche Bank made about 25 million euros, Depfa Bank earned 21 million euros and UBS made 10 million euros, court documents show.

So Obama invited the guy who runs a bank that knowingly defrauded customers, admitted to running fraudulent tax havens for rich people to avoid paying U.S. taxes, and just in general is a sleazy entity to play golf with him and have a nice photo op at Martha's Vineyard.

Did Obama invite him in order to lecture him about the bank's sleazy and/or criminal activities and warn him to run the bank on the up-and-up or the feds would come down on UBS with all their might?

Doubtful - that shit eating smile on President Accountability's face doesn't look like he's either about to or already has given a dressing down to UBS's Wolf.

Rather that smile says "Look at us - we're pals!!! Sure, I talked some jive about going after UBS and their offshore tax haven business when I was senator, but now that I'm president I see things a whole new way."

And Juan Gonzalez explained in Friday's Daily News just why that might be:

A former banker who blew the whistle on thousands of secret bank accounts rich Americans held at Swiss giant UBS claimed Thursday some U.S. politicians also kept off-shore accounts with the bank.

"We had an office in Washington that we all referred to as the PEP office - for 'Politically Exposed People,'" Bradley Birkenfeld said.

He was speaking by phone - on tax day, no less - from Schuylkill County federal prison in Pennsylvania, where he is serving a 40-month sentence for his role in the tax evasion scheme.

"Only top managers from the bank knew the names of the political clients," Birkenfeld said.

Executives from the bank's U.S. subsidiary, UBS America, he added, helped promote those off-shore accounts through a New York "referral desk" that steered U.S. clients to their Swiss colleagues, and through dozens of high society events that the U.S. subsidiary often sponsored.

Who are the politicians who had offshore tax havens with UBS? Was Obama one of them? You wouldn't think MR. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN would have an offshore tax haven with his golfing buddy's bank after he spent part of his Senate career railing against UBS and offshore tax havens, but then again, you never know. It would be fun to get the names on that UBS list, but it is of course doubtful that it will ever happen. I suspect bodies would turn up in landfills before we ever get the names of the politicians on that list (I am happy to be wrong, of course.)

The Obama administration, btw, is making sure that the UBS whistleblower is the only UBS official doing jail time. No other charges have been brought against any higher-ups at UBS. Birkenfeld's lawyers are filing a clemency petition for their client, saying that if not for Birkenfeld's testimony, the government never would have gotten UBS to admit to fraud and pay $780 million in fines. But until Obama decides on whether to grant clemency or not, Birkenfeld remains in jail.

Nice message for other potential whistleblowers in the financial industry, yes? If you did some of the crime, but your higher-ups approved of or even directed you to do it, you WILL do the time, they will NOT.

That has been the message from the Goldman Sachs case too. Just a mid-level VP at Goldman has been charged with fraud while the higher-ups who made billions go free.

The people at these financial institutions stole billions from municipalities, pension funds, and mom and pop investors and are getting away with all of it. They took billions from the federal government bailout programs and continue to get 0% interest loans from President Accountability and Helicopter Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve, adding billions if not a trillion to the federal deficit and debt, then have the chutzpah to decry government debt levels and claim that we cannot fund pensions, Social Security or Medicare.

Of course we can't - between the trillions we spend on American Empire and the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the billions in lost revenue from tax shore havens and legalized loopholes that corporations and wealthy people use to pay the lowest level of taxes in decades, how could we?

And Obama is happy to start a commission to look at ways to take care of the deficit problem. Of course the overseas wars and the money paid to keep the Empire going are not on the docket to get cut. Just Social Security, Medicare and other "entitlement" programs.

Meanwhile the real entitlement programs for the wealthiest and most powerful in the country continue unabated.

Not one person who caused the near financial collapse the past few years has been held accountable for their fraudulent activities and crimes.

Instead they have been rewarded with bonuses, bail-outs and golf games with the president.

As President Accountability said about Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Savvy businessmen? More like crooks who have gotten away with it all even as a peon or two below them and one whistleblower do the time for the crimes of the century.

Might that be because the president and the other politicians in Washington are benefiting almost as much from the quid pro quo relationship between the government in D.C. and the real permanent government on Wall Street as the financial industry is?