I had been also thinking (but did not write down) that the tide would turn, and that teachers and schools themselves would no longer be seen as the whole cause of poverty or brilliance.
Instead, I feared that racists would once again become free to loudly and publicly blame black and brown people for their own poverty, just like they did from the end of Reconstruction 147 years ago, right up through the anti-Civil Rights backlash of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1983 the essay (disguised as an objective report) called “Nation At Risk” (NAR) jump-started an Education Reform drive that was truly bi-partisan, and had scores of billionaires both liberal (eg Gates) and conservative (eg Waltons) willing to fund it and push politicians to back it. Presidents Clinton, Bush2, and Obama and their secretaries of education all embraced it.
If you hadn’t noticed, this reform movement failed completely.
By its own terms (that is, test scores).
Despite having ‘edu-reformers’ in charge of every single large public school system in the nation.
But it took a while for those failures to become obvious.
At first, only a handful of writers such as Gerald Bracey pointed out the errors in that study and in the reformers’ steamroller. When the report first came out, I was teaching math to 7th graders in a very poor region of DC, and felt embarrassed that so many of my students there (100% Black) did so poorly in school, despite my efforts and those of my colleagues.
Some teachers from East Asia warned me not to believe the hype surrounding NAR. They said the model of education that exists in China, Japan, Korea and so on was NOT one that should be emulated by the US.
But I did believe the myth.
Later, I read some columns by Bracey and others and began to have doubts.
Then the amazing fraud Michelle Rhee was given control of DC’s entire public school system in 2007, less than two years before I retired.
I had never heard of the woman before, but upon her being named Chancellor of DCPS, I heard that she claimed to have performed educational miracles in a low-income, all-Black public school as a 3rd and 4th grade charter school teacher in Baltimore. She wrote in her resume: “Over a two-year period” in the mid-1990s she “moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or higher.”
When I read that sentence in herresume, I seem to recall my jaw literally dropping open.
If you have ever been around kids and looked at their test scores, you would realize that this feat would be the equivalent of landing a triple axel in ice skating, while also sinking a three-pointer in the NBA, and running a marathon in under two hours.
Simultaneously.
If this really had happened, it would have been front-page news in every single publication that dealt with education.
(Sounds like George Santos took lessons on fake resume claims from Michelle Rhee!)
Of course, there were no such articles. So I scratched my head and wondered.
After I retired, someone pointed me to where the fairly detailed Baltimore test scores could be found. I looked at them, and found that she had mythologized a small bump in test scores into the greatest educational achievement ever accomplished, anywhere. And nobody had called her on this lie.
I suspect that the bump can be attributed in large part to the fact that over one third of the students at her grade level, at that school, in that year, had scores that were so low that they weren’t counted!!! I wrote a few posts on my blog about it, and even did a call-in on an NPR interview with her, asking why she lied so much, in particular about those scores. She just giggled, as if to imply that I was just being an idiot for trying to call her on such a small technicality, when she was still working miracles.
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From theDaily Howler: “In the 1994-1995 school year, the seven schools run by EAI were under enormous pressure. During and after the previous year, major disputes had broken out about the low test scores of the EAI schools; by the fall of 1994, everyone knew that the pressure was on, that the plug might be pulled on the program. (As a simple Nexis search will show, all these matters were being discussed in the Baltimore Sun.) Do we possess three brain cells among us? If any school in the EAI group had an educational miracle occurring, this glorious fact would have been shouted to the skies by EAI’s corporate leadership. Trust us: The teachers involved would have gained acclaim in the national media—the kind of “acclaim” Rhee used to say she had attained, before she realized she had to stop saying it. It’s absurd to think there was some large group of third-graders “scoring at the 90th percentile or higher,” but their test scores somehow never came to the attention of the UMBC researchers.”
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Apparently nobody else with any knowledge of basic, elementary statistics and probability had previously bothered to compare those actual scores with her extraordinary claims. So I wrote what I found, with a fair amount of fury at the fact that such an amazing, world-class fraud and liar could be in charge of education in my home city, Washington, DC, the very seat of national government and so on. I got my 15 minutes of fame, but while Rhee did retire in disgrace, she has unfortunately never been indicted for fraud, even though she clearlysuborned all sorts of cheating and erasing of bubble marks on students’ tests, and gave prizes and awards to one of the most prolific cheaters, a principal in my own neighborhood. (see here for some details.)
As I have recently feared, but did not put into writing, the really scary part now is that right-wingers and racists are using the failure of this billionaire-led disruption of public schools to get rid of the very idea of public education as a public good. They applaud the self-segregation.
In the wake of testimony this springabout charters needing, and deserving, the monetary increase that DCPS teachers fought for (and won) through their union, this blog post aims to be an outline of some basics of charter school funding and expenditures in DC as well as public accountability behind both.
The bottom line is that accounting of DC charter finances is disaggregated, incomplete, inconsistent, and sometimes purposefully obfuscating, and lacks any meaningful democratic governance and guardrails. As a result, true public oversight is almost impossible for the finances of the publicly funded schools that educate nearly half of DC’s students. This landscape represents a real danger to good use of taxpayer funds and, consequently, proper financing of all of DC’s publicly funded schools.
Each year, DC charter schools receive $1 billion from DC taxpayers (about the same as DCPS receives) by way of the uniform per student funding formula (UPSFF). That public money for charters (apportioned to each on the basis of student population and characteristics, as it is to DCPS) goes directly to the individual, privately run nonprofits that operate each of DC’s 69 charter LEAs.
A separate funding formula is used to provide charters with facilities funds from DC taxpayers. Those facilities funds are apportioned based on the number of students in each LEA, with a set amount per student. The total amount of facilities funds slated forcharters for FY24 is about $175 million. Though the idea is to ensure charters have funds specifically for facilities (something that DCPS does not have to pay for itself), DC charter facilities funds can be used for anything and are entirely untracked and unmonitored by DC.
While those two funding streams from DC taxpayers constitute the majority of each DC charter school’s annual revenue streams, DC charters can also receive federal and local grants from the office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE) as well as philanthropic and other (private) grant revenue.
To better outline charter finances, how they are reported, specific problem areas (reserves, audits, facilities funds, and philanthropy), and what all this means for DC democracy, I have organized this blog post in the following broad categories:
I. The Current Landscape II. Problems With The Current Landscape III. Reserves IV. Audits V. Facilities Funds VI. Philanthropy VII. Solutions
I am happy to include more and correct what is here as you, my readers, may advise–including adding more solutions to what is an annual $1 billion anti-democratic mess.
I. THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE
To account for their spending, DC charters provide to the public charter school board (PCSB, their authorizer) annual 990s as well as annual budgets, annual audits, and annual reports.
In addition to publicly posting all of that, PCSB provides its own annual financial analysis reports and annual at risk funding reports, while posting the deputy mayor for education’s annual per pupil funding analyses (which look at a high level of per pupil funding in charters). The financial analysis reports are created by PCSB to analyze the fiscal health of individual charter schools, while at risk funding reports are compilations of what individual charter LEAs report of their planned use of at risk funds.
Between all of these, there is a lot of financial information—which sounds good except for its inherent disaggregation and resulting lack of meaningful and connected detail:
—annual reports of charter schools outline minimum, maximum, and average teacher salaries and also list “salaries of the 5 most highly compensated individuals in the organization, if over $100,000” for the prior school year. There is no requirement for donations to be outlined, and while listing the top five salaries is perhaps sufficient for a small LEA, it doesn’t work well for a large LEA like KIPP DC, whose latest annual report outlines top five salaries ranging from $216K to $359K (by comparison, the DCPS chancellor makes less than $300K, while DC’s mayor makes $220K). Moreover, each annual report is done by school year, not fiscal year like the financial analysis reports, annual budgets, and annual audits.
—annual budgets (done by fiscal year) appear to have more finely outlined details than annual reports, but again do not outline who donated what and do not outline all executive salaries, individual teacher salaries, specific grants and donations, and specific facilities costs and expenditures.
—annual audits are also done by fiscal year, but a year prior to the budgets, making alignment of the information between publicly available financial sources difficult (not to mention that some of the audit information is frankly out of date by the time of its posting). The audits appear to outline federal grants; contracts; lease activities; and real estate obligations as well as loans and other fiscal obligations. They also outline donor restrictions on funds. But as with the annual budgets, there is no outline of who donated what; all executive salaries; individual teacher salaries; all grants and donations; and clear delineation of facilities costs and expenditures as well as actual real estate holdings. As with the annual reports and budgets, the reporting is dependent on what the school itself provides to the auditing companies they hire for this purpose.
—990s for each DC charter LEA are publicly available on websites other than PCSB’s (for instance, the IRS website, guidestar, and pro publica’s nonprofit explorer)–but all are literally years behind the current year. (For example, the latest form for DC Prep is for 2019 on both PCSB’s and pro publica’s websites, dating from 2020, while guidestar has a 2018 form dating from 2019.) The 990s are the only place I have seen where some charter LEAs indicate that they have engaged in lobbying. The 990s also list the highest paid salaries, contracts, and fundraising expenses as well as contributions in excess of $5000—but without any donor information (i.e., just 5 individuals gave KIPP DC $14 million as reported on its 2019 990—but who they are is publicly unknown).
—financial analysis reports are created by PCSB based on information in the audits and data submitted directly to PCSB by charter LEAs. The financial analysis reports put that information into more readily understandable categories. The reports contain the days of cash on hand and percentage of DC and grant funding for each charter. The reports use this data among others to present “report cards” on each LEA’s fiscal strength.
—at risk funding reports before FY23 are collections of aspirational wishes and actions, not only because charters have not been required to report how their at risk funds are used, but also because the reporting is (perhaps obviously) highly variable. That will change slightly starting in 2024, when charters will report both their budgeted and actual at risk expenditures. But the variability of use will likely continue, as at risk funds in each charter are not mandated for any specific uses, unlike in DCPS.
II. PROBLEMS WITH THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE
As outlined above, the public has a lot of available fiscal information around our charters–but it is not easily or even directly related to the most basic questions of accountability with respect to public money.
Setting aside clear and direct fiscal mismanagement, here are the problems:
1. There are no truly independent audits of DC charters, whether for attendance (which is directly related to DC’s school ratings and payments) or taxpayer funds. Charters’ annual audits are done by companies hired by individual charter businesses.
2. There is no forensic accounting, or tracking, by DC government of any charter money, including randomized tracking of taxpayer funds and money following students from charters to DCPS after count day. This is important inasmuch as DCPS sees an influx of students from charters every year—but the money cannot follow those students because there is no tracking of it OR of students. It is also important because all publicly available information on DC charter finances originates with the charter nonprofits themselves, incentivizing obfuscation. (More on that under “audits” below.)
3. There are no rules on reporting specific charter expenditures for teacher pay and facilities. As noted above, the facilities funding is completely untracked and without any mandate for its use. As a result, public reporting on these and other areas of charter spending is entirely voluntary, incomplete at best, and publicly untransparent.
4. There is no required disclosure of donors and their donations to charter schools. While donations do not constitute a large percentage of DC charter revenue as far as I can see, for some charters donations are sizable and constitute a powerful tool in their operations. Moreover, the way in which philanthropic revenue is accounted for is less than clear, with literally unbelievable reporting of $0 in philanthropic revenue for some LEAs. (More on that under “philanthropy” below.)
5. There are no mandated charter reserves or limits on reserves.
6. There are no rules for investments, or use, of charter reserves, which are mainly DC taxpayer funds. This represents a boon for the financial sector, essentially transferring public dollars to private hands without any way for the public to have a direct say in that investment and a direct benefit from it.
7. Although there is public reporting of charter contracts, it is completely disaggregated (see the PCSB website here), with charter 990s the only other source of this information (where it is truncated and years behind the present). This means there is no way for anyone outside the LEAs themselves to know what contracts any given LEA has at any given moment.
8. No elected or appointed DC official with any oversight of DC charters has knowledge of individual LEA charter donors, use of reserves, teacher pay, per pupil expenditures, facilities expenditures, contracts, or use of at risk funds, so oversight of DC charters by officials directly accountable to the public is necessarily limited.
As a result of this weak and publicly unresponsive governance, several things are apparent with respect to DC charter finances:
–Every LEA has different methods, different desires, and different uses for its money. While the central tenet of DC charters is their independent governance, those different things are not accounted for anywhere clearly or unambiguously. In fact, if revealed at all, that information is disaggregated such that meaningful public oversight is nearly impossible.
–At no point can anyone outline basic financial issues in charters, such as which LEA pays teachers the best or even the most consistently (i.e., is there a minimum and a maximum salary for teachers and administrators); what return on investment LEAs have for their investments; and what hundreds of millions in facilities funds are used for.
–Many charter executives have large-scale pay that is revealed explicitly only in the LEA’s 990s—and thus disaggregated from all teacher pay in all public accounting and not up to date. But when plotted against charter teacher pay (see here if that link isn’t working), the disparity is jarring—especially as at least 10 charter executives are currently making more than DC’s mayor, despite no charter LEA having as many students as DCPS, which the mayor herself is nominally in charge of.
The bottom line: There is no way for anyone in the public sphere to understand where that annual $1 billion investment in our charters actually goes and how much is being directly invested in our kids.
Below are a few areas of charter finances where the lack of public sunshine is very problematic.
III. RESERVES
Per FY21 guidelines (the most recent available) for PCSB’s financial analysis reports, PCSB recommends that schools have “at least 45 days of cash on hand. Fewer than 30 days of cash on hand may be cause for concern.”
But the median of cash on hand for charters, per the FY21 financial analysis report, is 165 days. It is not clear what level, if any, is actually required (as opposed to recommended)—and certainly there is nothing about what a maximum should be.
At the March 3 oversight hearing, starting at the 4 hour and 55 minute mark of the video, at large council member Christina Henderson asked the PCSB executive director about cash on hand, noting one school with 24 days of cash on hand while another school with about 700 days. Henderson mused that if charter LEAs have all that cash, why not just pay their teachers more?
In response, the PCSB executive director and the PCSB director of finance noted that refinancing or saving for mortgages may be a reason a school has small or large reserves, respectively.
A few minutes later in the same hearing, Ward 3 council member Matt Frumin noted that if cash on hand is being banked for expansions, it’s getting ahead of the issue. He also noted that charter cash on hand goes up annually by $50 million.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear how to account for that annual growth.
For instance, the FY20 financial analysis report showed $351 million in “unrestricted cash” for DC’s charter schools.
But the FY21 financial analysis report showed that “unrestricted cash and cash equivalents” amounted to $419 million.
So: what is “unrestricted cash” versus “unrestricted cash and cash equivalents”? It is not defined clearly anywhere.
Moreover, annual growth in cash reserves appears to be different for each LEA, without any clearly delineated and publicly specified reasons for that growth, such that it is impossible for any DC officials or taxpayers to know if the growth is due to investments, better use of money, or something else (layoffs of staff, reorganizing, etc.).
Possibly the only deduction one can make around the annual growth of DC charter cash reserves is that it is mainly money paid by DC that is not going directly to students now or (possibly) ever, because most funding to DC charters comes directly from DC taxpayers.
When I mentioned last year to the PCSB director of finance this obscured public view of charter spending because of the obscurity around cash reserves, he noted that not only do PCSB staff check in with charters regularly when they see large reserves (or lack thereof), but that charter review and renewal reports show “patterns of cash” that elucidate their operation.
The trouble is that the public is not privy to PCSB staff conversations on that subject—not to mention that those charter renewal reports occur only every 5 years, which for the sake of public clarity and accounting is an eternity.
DC Prep provides an excellent example of these problems.
A year ago, at its May 2022 board meeting, DC Prep’s board discussed investing almost $30 million in cash reserves. That amount represents more than 10% of the LEA’s annual operating budget with about 2000 students. Shortly thereafter, DC Prep advertised for an investment manager (see the notice in the charter school section of the DC register, 69/26, dated 7/1/22).
As a staffer noted at minute 39 of the May 2022 meeting video, DC Prep has seen an extra $4 million in its coffers annually, mainly due to “healthy increases in per pupil funding.”
Not surprisingly, given that the school receives almost 90% of its revenues from DC taxpayers, at the 56 minute mark of the video of that May 2022 board meeting a DC Prep board member worried about the “optics” of a publicly funded charter school having an investment strategy for tens of millions.
But housing developer and board member Terry Eakin had a different view. At 58 minutes in the video, Eakin noted that “donors have given us over $36 million since the beginning [in 2003]. If we were investing in the stock market monies from the taxpayers, I think it would be different.” Eakin also noted (boldface mine) that “in the unlikely event we were to make a major investment and lose all of [the invested cash], it wouldn’t be monies we had gotten from DC. I would earmark it as monies we received from donors. . . . the way I look at it, we’re just trying to get a better return for our kids.”
At that same May 2022 board meeting, DC Prep’s board declined to give permanent raises to staff—even though teachers there are paid on average less than $70,000 per year; the school struggles with staff retention (that topic alone took up almost half of the May 2022 board meeting discussion); and the school’s top administrators have recently been paid more than the mayor.
Let us put all of this into perspective:
DC Prep’s most recent publicly available audits show that between 2014 and 2021, DC Prep got an average of 82% of its revenues directly from DC taxpayers. Each audit makes this statement: “DC Prep receives a substantial portion of its revenue from DC.” The school also has a fairly high debt load—something that the FY21 financial analysis report noted.
So we know that
–Terry Eakin’s statement regarding DC Prep’s cash reserves as given (mainly or wholly) by donors is incorrect; –DC Prep’s teachers are not well paid relative to its administrators; and –Despite troubles with staff retention, relatively low pay for teachers, and a high debt load, DC Prep’s board avoided using the LEA’s extra millions in cash to address any of it, declining to raise salaries overall or to offer (as detailed at minute 31 of the board video) a “substantial bonus” or “money” to discourage mid-year staff departures.
Upshot:
Even though charter cash reserves largely come from DC taxpayers, the purposefully weak governance structure of DC charters ensures that DC taxpayers (and the elected and appointed officials representing their interests) have NO control or say in any of it, even though all of it is central to the operation of those LEAs and the mission of teaching our kids and constitutes hundreds of millions transferred from the public to private hands.
IV. AUDITS
As noted above, DC charters’ annual audits are conducted by companies charters themselves hire and then provide with statements about the schools’ accounting. In addition, those audits and individual LEA reporting are the basis for PCSB’s financial analysis reports, which analyze and report on the fiscal health of charters.
But even while they appear to be extensive, charter audits have two glaring problems.
1. Charter business dealings and investments are not entirely (or at all) clear in the audits.
For instance, both KIPP DC and DC Prep own property that is not as far as I can see currently used or rented. As a result, I could not figure out how that is reported in the audits, because it is not specifically mentioned.
In December 2019, DC Prep bought 1619 Frankford St. SE, a decrepit residential property with a large lot, as a location for a future middle school. In the wake of public protest, DC Prep promised to sell the property if it got another location for its middle school. (See p. 79 of the transcript of the PCSB November 18, 2019 meeting here: “If we can secure an alternative site for our permanent location, we will resell the Frankford Street site.”)
But DC Prep still owns the property in 2023, despite being awarded in 2021 a huge site by DC for its middle school. How DC Prep’s ownership of 1619 Frankford is accounted for in publicly accessible documents is unclear–even when the school owes property taxesand accrued penalties on it.
In early 2017, KIPP DC bought 12 wooded, undeveloped acres behind Gainesville St. SE, in Hillcrest, and days later proposed to build a 900 seat high school there. While that proposal was defeated by community opposition, half a decade later KIPP DC still owns that land. The tax rate and assessed value is very low, amounting to a tiny fraction of KIPP DC’s expenditures and assets—but how this is accounted for, including the millions used to purchase the land and what KIPP DC’s future plans are for it, remain publicly obscured.
And that is not mentioning DC charters that also operate in other jurisdictions (i.e., Friendship and Eagle). Those operations are unaccounted for in publicly available documents for DC charters, even though those operations outside DC could affect the financial health of the LEAs’ DC operations.
2. Audits are delayed relative to other charter financial information, and this ensures poor information for the public while vitiating meaningful oversight.
Perhaps the most obvious example of that is the recent revelation that $2 million was embezzled from KIPP DC—which was (incredibly) not the only OR largest recent fiscal impropriety of KIPP DC.
KIPP DC’s $2 million embezzlement took place from April 2020 through August 2021, a relatively long period. But the school’s most recent publicly available audit, from June 2021, doesn’t mention it. That may be because KIPP DC was reported to have found the problem only months after that June 2021 audit, “during a routine internal review in December [2021].”
That said, the embezzlement did not become public knowledge until nearly a year after KIPP DC’s reported discovery of it, after the feds filed a lawsuit for civil forfeiture in August 2022.
In other words, but for the feds suing 8 months after KIPP DC said it discovered the $2 million embezzlement, we the DC public might STILL not know about any of this. As it is, the lawsuit was filed months after multiple spring oversight hearings in 2022 by the DC Council, hearings in which none of this was raised.
In addition to that embezzled $2 million, more than $5 million around construction contracts and commitments was in the last 2 or more years underreported by KIPP DC (see p. 42 in the June 2021 audit).
The most recent PCSB financial analysis report, from FY21, came out sometime after September 15, 2022–in the wake of reporting around the federal forfeiture lawsuit around the embezzlement at KIPP DC. The analysis of KIPP DC in that FY21 report gives the LEA a good rating for fiscal health, but also notes the $2M embezzlement AND the $5M underreporting. The financial analysis report goes on to note that it didn’t believe the underreporting was related to the embezzlement, but that the LEA will take “further corrective actions.”
So: what are those “further corrective actions” and when will we taxpayers hear about them?
In an early September 2022 story about the embezzlement, PCSB was reported to be holding a public hearing later in that same month to “highlight the steps it has taken and will take in the future to prevent other incidents of fiscal malfeasance in the charter sector.”
It never happened.
Then, in October 2022, when I spoke to him about the embezzlement, the PCSB director of finance said PCSB was “continuing to gather information and review it” and expected to have a “robust conversation” in November or December [2022] about it.
If that conversation ever happened, it certainly was not public.
That said, the charter board recently held a closed session on April 24, 2023 to discuss KIPP DC’s finances (remember: three YEARS after the embezzlement started and about two YEARS after the underreported $5 million). That 4/24/23 Monday morning meeting was publicly noticed only 72 hours before, on a Friday (April 21) in the DC Register.
And this is not even getting into the confusing information provided to the public about the $2 million that was embezzled.
For instance, the federal lawsuit specifically says this:
“Between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020, KIPP DC received approximately $1,372,412 in federal grants, and between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, KIPP DC received approximately $3,426,314 in federal grants.”
One would thus conclude that the embezzled $2 million constituted federal grant money that the federal government is seeking to get back.
Yet in 2022 public reporting in the wake of that lawsuit filing (see here and here), a KIPP DC spokesperson said the embezzled funds came from “KIPP DC’s financial reserves and from a single private grant.”
So which is it: “private” money kept as cash reserves OR money the federal government is entitled to?
Now, three years after the embezzlement started, and two years after the underreporting of $5 million, we don’t know
whose money was taken; what the misreporting means for the public; when any missing money will be returned and how; and why none of this was ever publicly reported by KIPP DC and/or PCSB directly and unambiguously.
In fact, not one syllable about any of this was uttered at the recent spring 2023 oversight hearings at the council.
V. FACILITIES FUNDS
DC charter LEAs are granted facilities funds that provide a set amount per student each year, without any specification about how those funds are to be used. In addition, there is no tracking of them by any DC entity. In the last decade alone, DC charter LEAs received more than $1 billion in facilities allocations.
In a recent letter about charters wanting to have more money as a result of the DCPS teacher contract, the PCSB executive director noted that charter facilities funds must cover both capital expenses as well as maintenance for DC charter schools.
But that is in fact incorrect (as C4DC noted in its own correspondence on the subject): The UPSFF is meant to cover charter maintenance costs—which it in fact does in DCPS.
At the March 3 hearing, after noting that DC charter facilities allocations are about $25 million less than reported occupancy expenses in the sector, Ward 3 council member Matt Frumin said that $50 million of charter occupancy expenses are for maintenance. Thus, he noted, one might conclude that the facilities allowance for charters is $25 million too much!
Unfortunately, the accounting here is not good. For one, no one is tracking facilities funds. For another, facilities funds are given without regard for need. And for yet another, as a result of both of those things, no elected or appointed officials can exercise any oversight whatsoever.
It’s not just a blind trust—it’s needlessly anti-democratic and inevitably wasting public money.
Consider that in 2019, Rocketship applied to open a Ward 5 campus. Its application noted that eventually, the total facilities costs for all three of its DC campuses would amount to $6.5 million per year, for about 2112 students. The application noted that that comes out to about $3068 per student–which is less than what the school would expect to receive in per student charter facilities funds (in FY20, that was $3335 per student).
VI. PHILANTHROPY
Until sometime after 2017, philanthropic revenue in DC charters was reported unambiguously as precisely that: philanthropic revenue. (See, for example, the chart here for 2017, from the financial analysis report for that year.)
But sometime after 2017, PCSB stopped reporting philanthropic revenue clearly, eventually removing the term “philanthropy” entirely and changing the years of reporting, such that it is now practically impossible to know what, exactly, each charter has for philanthropic revenue.
Here’s what happened:
This document is a sequential compilation of screenshots of the FY18-FY21 financial analysis reports for exhibit 10, which starting in FY18 purportedly showed philanthropic revenue in DC charters.
In the FY18 report, this exhibit 10 table is titled “philanthropic revenue by school.” But unlike the 2017 table (where the column reporting this data is labeled “philanthropy”), here the values for individual LEAs are put into a column labeled “FY [X year] grants and contributions.”
As OSSE can and does give grants to charter schools, this is a bit confusing: what grants and what contributions? It’s not said. But if one looks at the 2017 table, and compares the 2017 values to the values reported for FY2017 on the FY18 table, it seems like they are the same values.
But while we can thus deduce (at least for the few LEAs I checked) that “grants and contributions” for 2018 = philanthropy for 2017, this is not explained anywhere.
For the FY19 financial analysis report, this information is reported differently yet. Instead of labelling the columns in exhibit 10 “FY [X year] grants and contributions” (as was done for the prior year’s report), the FY19 financial analysis report labels all of them with a 2-year span—for example, “2018-2019 total grants and other contributions.”
So: Is that a fiscal year? A school year? A calendar year?
Again, it is unexplained—but again, one can deduce that these are likely the same values as shown in the same exhibit for the same years in the FY18 financial analysis report.
That is, the “FY2017 grants and contributions” reported in the FY2018 financial analysis report for exhibit 10 (“philanthropic revenue by school”) appear to be the same as the “2016-2017 total grants and contributions” reported in the “philanthropic revenue by school” (exhibit 10) in the FY2019 financial analysis report—at least for the few I checked. The totals certainly add up to the same numbers.
But who will check from one year to the next to see if the reporting changed at all, in the event that these are in fact *not* intended to be equivalents, as no explanation is provided?
For the same exhibit in the FY20 financial analysis report, the labelling appears to be the same for the columns as in the FY19 financial analysis report—but the entire table is titled differently, as “grants and other contributions by school.”
Thus, with the FY20 financial analysis report, we have entirely lost any mention of philanthropy or philanthropic revenue!
As with the FY19 financial analysis report, exhibit 10 in the FY20 financial analysis report labels the columns with a year spread—for instance, the column with the most recent data is “2019-2020 total grants and contributions.”
In the latest financial analysis report, for FY21, exhibit 10 is different yet again, with the entire table being labelled “grants and other contributions by LEA” and columns being labelled thusly: “FY [year] total grants and other contributions.”
For all the exhibit 10 tables contained in the FY18-FY21 financial analysis reports, it appears that the column with the most recent data has the same values as a column outlining grants and contributions by LEA in those reports’ exhibit 9, which outlines sources of revenue by LEA (including total revenue, federal revenue, grants, and other (unspecified) income). The column in each report’s exhibit 9 that appears to be identical to that exhibit 10 column is titled “total grants and other contributions.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, each report’s exhibit 9 and all their columns, including the ones outlining grants and contributions, doesn’t mention philanthropy at all.
Thus, back in October, to better understand where philanthropic revenue figures in this reporting, I spoke with PCSB director of finance Michael Bayuk. He told me that the exhibit 9 column for the FY21 financial analysis report (“total grants and other contributions”) is state and local grants and philanthropy. He told me that “we didn’t think it” worthy of including philanthropy separately as a category.
He then noted that a “large part of these funds” (i.e., in that column of total grants and other contributions) is philanthropy. (I discovered, however, that this last bit is not true, at least for FY21—read on.)
As far as OSSE grants go, Bayuk noted that sometimes OSSE is a pass-through for federal money, so in that case, if an OSSE grant to a charter is federal money, it gets counted as federal for this table. The column in exhibit 9 titled “other income” is activity fees, interest income, rental income, and anything that doesn’t fit into the other columns. He noted that it is variable; it is certainly not forthcoming in terms of defining, or breaking out, where the money is coming from.
To better suss out philanthropic revenue in DC charters, in October 2022 I requested by FOIA from PCSB the source files for the column on exhibit 9 of the FY21 financial analysis report titled “total grants and other contributions,” broken out in terms of state, local, and other grants; philanthropy; and whatever else is contained in that column for each school.
Therein ensued nearly 6 months’ worth of obfuscation including unlawful delays; creation of documents specifically for me that were not what I requested; incomplete production; and document manipulation such that dates were obscured. (You can read the whole sorry saga here.)
But by March 2023, I had in my possession (finally!) what I think (and hope and believe) is a complete set of what are most likely original source files for this information. They consist of spreadsheets with an actual line item called “income from philanthropy.” Here’s a link to all the different folders and files, produced over a period of more than a month.
That line item, income from philanthropy, is separated out from grants and is apparently what DC charters report each year directly to PCSB. By compiling the FY21 income from philanthropy line items for each charter and comparing them to the values shown for each charter for grants and contributions on the FY21 financial analysis report, I discovered a few things:
1. PCSB collects information every year from DC charters specifically on their philanthropic revenue. But because there is no required reporting of philanthropy in DC charters other than this, the only measure we have is what PCSB gets—and it is available to DC taxpayers only by FOIA and until such a time as PCSB decides not to request that data from charters.
2. For the most recent year of grants and contributions in the FY21 financial analysis report, the values shown for that in exhibits 9 and 10 are identical—but in most cases not the same as “income from philanthropy” as reported on the documents I received via FOIA.
3. For only a relatively small subset of schools (12 out of 66 by my count), philanthropy constitutes the vast majority of grants and contributions.
4. For other schools, the majority of their grant and other contribution income appears not to come from philanthropy. For some of these, however, the utter lack of philanthropic revenue reported is mystifying. How is it that KIPP DC doesn’t have any philanthropic revenue for an entire year? (See this webpage for KIPP: “KIPP DC relies 100% on private donations to fund growth efforts to reach more students and operate critical programs like KIPP Forward and the Capital Teaching Residency.”)
5. For yet another subset of schools, there is nothing–no philanthropy and/or no grants—which appears to highlight disproportional outside funding in DC charters.
Notwithstanding that lack of clarity around philanthropic revenue, the sheer amount in charter “grants and contributions” is astonishing. In that short period starting with FY18, for instance, the total grew thusly:
All of that begs the question: what was/is behind that growth? Federal money in the pandemic? Something else? The point appears to be that no one knows—least of all DC taxpayers.
And this analysis of PCSB reporting shows that obscurity is purposeful.
VII. SOLUTIONS
All of these issues—the obfuscation, the lack of data, the impossibility of oversight, and the lack of budgetary guardrails and basic guidelines—make clear that there is no way for anyone in the public sphere to understand where DC taxpayers’ annual $1 billion investment in our charters goes and how much is directly invested in our kids.
This isn’t about the ever-mentioned “outcomes,” whether test scores, graduation rates, or post-secondary career or college achievement. It is, literally, about where the money DC taxpayers provide is going. Simply put, such “outcomes” are meaningless metrics without understanding where OUR money is actually going–and where it isn’t going.
So let us look at what we CAN and SHOULD do better regarding public accountability in charter finances:
–Track students so money follows them.
–Require teacher minimum pay in charters, along with full disclosure of all charter teacher salaries as in DCPS.
–Require documentation from individual LEAS that all their charter teachers receive increases as a result of any cash the charter sector receives as a result of DCPS teacher wage increases from union contracts.
–Disclose all donors and the amount they donate to all DC publicly funded schools.
–Hold regular investigative, independent audits of all DC charter businesses.
–Make DC—not private businesses or the financial institutions they choose to enrich—the reserve holder for all charter reserves, in amounts proportional to the percentage of taxpayer funds received. DC would be responsible for investment of that money and would pass the investment proceeds only to charter LEAs that have demonstrated need of it. This underscores that DC charter businesses are not mere nonprofits–they are chartered entities that are chartered for a specific public purpose and do not exist to profit from (or to profit others in) that public purpose.
–Enact a maximum pay limit for charter executives and administrators.
–Decouple all efforts to specifically increase charter teacher pay from increases in DCPS teacher pay. The two sectors are separate and governed differently, and teacher pay is purposefully different in each. If DC charter teacher pay is inadequate at any given moment, that is an issue solely to be addressed by the charter sector–not coupled to anything in DCPS.
–Disclose all charter school business deals and assets explicitly and directly, naming each.
–Have a website for all charter contracts per LEA at all times.
–Have explicit disclosure of, and tracking for, all facilities funds to charters, and apportion facilities funds based on demonstrated need and without regard for maintenance costs, which are included in the UPSFF.CommentLikeYou can also reply to this email to leave a comment.
On the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it’s important for us as a nation to reflect on that conflict and its consequences. As the vice president of the United States in 2003, I was one of the architects of the project to go after Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Today, I believe it’s important to offer an honest assessment of my role in the Iraq War. Looking back on it now, I have to say that, wow, I mostly got it right.
Seriously, the Iraq War went basically as well as I could have hoped.
We in the Bush administration justified the war on the basis of destroying Saddam’s WMDs and bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. Twenty years later, we know that Saddam didn’t have any WMDs, and that the United States left Iraq in the throes of poverty and violence. Critics then and now have suggested that we deliberately misrepresented intelligence, and that spreading democracy was merely a fig leaf for our true goal of maintaining U.S. political and economic dominance over the world.
To that, I say, no shit. Duh. Of course we were lying. Of course we only went in to maintain American hegemony. That was the whole plan all along.
Christ, what country do you think we are?
In hindsight, it’s stunning to see how right I was about the long-term impacts of invading Iraq. Sure, there are the obvious wins of destabilizing governments we don’t like, strengthening U.S. control over the oil industry, and killing a bunch of Muslims. That was all pretty neat, and exactly what we expected. But let’s be honest about the Iraqi victims: You don’t care about them, and I don’t care about them. Because, ultimately, the goal of the Iraq War was much bigger than that, and we achieved that goal: the victory of the U.S. war machine over the American people.
In my heart of hearts, I figured that if Americans would accept the Iraq War, then there was nothing they wouldn’t accept. It seems clear, 20 years later, that I’ve been proven right.
For starters, we wanted to put the American political and media class on a permanent war footing. After the Soviet Union collapsed, things looked dicey in terms of keeping Americans all frothed up about foreign adversaries. Sure, 9/11 helped, but what we really craved was a rationale for endless war. In Iraq, we implemented our playbook for the post-Vietnam, post-Soviet, 21st-century invasion, and it’s amazing to see how well it all played out. Today, all we have to do is say “democracy,” and our political and media elite will rush to support any military action like slobbering dogs. I don’t mean to be immodest, but that’s exactly how I predicted it would go down.
Any Iraq War reflection must contend with the rise of ISIS—one of America’s greatest accomplishments. ISIS was a real home run for us. We suspected that sowing wanton violence across the Middle East would stoke anti-American insurgencies that didn’t conform to conventional national or geographic boundaries. In theory, they could be everywhere. And if the enemy could be everywhere, it justified basically any action to stop them. Which was great, because the deliberately vague war on terror gave a blank check to the men and women who bravely reap the profits of our private military contractors.
I imagine the name Halliburton rings a bell? What we wanted to do, what Rumsfeld and Condi and I and the rest of that bunch really wanted to do, was forever shift war-making into the hands of weapons contractors and mercenary armies. Not only does that make me and a bunch of my buddies incredibly rich, but it makes it so that even if regular people wanted to stop the war machine, they couldn’t. All decisions are made outside public control, and there aren’t any democratic mechanisms left to stop it. Of all the legacies of the war, that might be my absolute favorite.
I’m calling on all Americans to support our mission to invade Thailand and restore democracy.
Gotcha! You started feeling all patriotic for a second there, didn’t you? Started getting all indignant about those poor suffering Thai people and ready to put their flag in your social media handle? I have no fucking clue if Thailand has a democracy, and I don’t care. But inspiring that knee-jerk jingoistic reaction in you, that right there is the legacy of the Iraq War. That’s my legacy.
When I’m right, I’m right.
Because ultimately, that might be the thing we were most right about: We figured that tying being a “real American” to patriotism would make it effectively impossible to mount a serious anti-war effort in this country ever again. Since the Iraq War, Democrats have been so worried about being labeled soft on terrorism that they’ve given full-throated support to every military action that our weapons lobbyists and intelligence agencies could devise. In addition, legitimate public grievances over America’s most heinous actions can be reduced by the media to feckless “culture war” battles, which neutralizes their power. If you don’t believe those were major driving forces behind the war in Iraq, I have a weapon of mass destruction to sell you.
It’s easy for armchair critics to condemn the Iraq War. But you have to remember what things were like back in 2003. People actually trusted the government and had faith in the idea of America. Trust and faith aren’t very sturdy things to build a perpetual war machine on, and they don’t make a lot of money, either. The Iraq War eroded faith in the government and drove more Americans into suspicion and hatred, just as we hoped it would. Combine that with rising inequality and the American cult of the individual, and you have a perfect recipe for ensuring that most Americans are too disillusioned to mount collective resistance to any governmental transgressions. That’s what I always hoped the Iraq War might accomplish, and man, it feels good to be right.
Looking back, it’s safe to say the Iraq War was the high point of my career. Except maybe shooting that guy.
It is truly amazing that there is an observable universe at all with the laws of gravity, physics and chemistry as they are. We should be grateful for this — without it, we would not exist.
However the universe began, it is truly amazing that untold generations of novae, supernovae, and planetary nebulae have successively enriched the interstellar medium enough for our own extraordinary solar system came into existence with lots of higher-atomic-number elements. We should be grateful for this — without it, we would not exist.
It is also truly amazing that this little planet of ours survived aeons of bombardments by other planetary bodies, enriched by a stabilizing Moon and a good bit of water and enough carbon to enable carbon-based life forms to arise and evolve. We should be grateful for this — without it, we would not exist. Note: no other planet has been discovered that appears to be habitable.
It is truly amazing that our species has evolved in such a way that we cooperate better than any other species (except the social insects) and we teach each other skills; so much so that in the past few centuries we have figured out large parts of the puzzles of matter, life, and the universe. Unfortunately, we are also really, really good at organizing ourselves into corporations, ruling classes, tribes, nations and armies that fight each other, oppress and exploit the majority, and do an amazing job of destroying the very fabric of life.
I am very, very grateful for all of these wonderful forces that brought us into being. Who or what (being or forces) brought us all into existence is a mystery we will never, ever figure out. If you want to call it “God”, go right ahead, but don’t pretend this god has anything to do with any of the fairy tales recorded in any “holy book”.
The only part of this planet that is habitable is extremely tiny. If you try to climb a mountain 4 miles (6 km) above sea level, you will die — unless you bring special, expensive equipment like bottled oxygen. Our very deepest mines (in South Africa), dug at enormous expense to mine gold, are so hot at those levels that you will die down there without special equipment. Also, you can’t dive more than a a few meters into the sea without special training and equipment. Ccompare that few miles of possible vertical travel to the diameter of the Earth (~8000 miles) and you will find that human life without amazing protective bubbles is as thick as a sheet of paper glued to a basketball. And we are screwing it up quickly.
If there are other planets out there that are as lucky as Earth, they are SSOOOO far away that there is no conceivable way to get there except in science fiction (ie fairy tales).
Let us stop oppressing and murdering each other, and stop destroying the only known habitable planet in the entire universe.
Star Trek prepared me to feel a connection with the universe. Instead, I felt terrible grief for our planet. At Cop15, our leaders must negotiate to protect it
Wed 7 Dec 2022 10.00 ESTFollow William Shatner
Click to see figure captionThe age of extinction is supported byAbout this contentLast year, at the age of 90, I had a life-changing experience.
I went to space, after decades of playing a science-fiction character who was exploring the universe and building connections with many diverse life forms and cultures.
I thought I would experience a similar feeling: a feeling of deep connection with the immensity around us, a deep call for endless exploration. A call to indeed boldly go where no one had gone before.
I was absolutely wrong.
As I explained in my latest book, what I felt was totally different. I knew that many before me had experienced a greater sense of care while contemplating our planet from above, because they were struck by the apparent fragility of this suspended blue marble.
I felt that too.
But the strongest feeling, dominating everything else by far, was the deepest grief that I had ever experienced.
While I was looking away from Earth, and turned towards the rest of the universe, I didn’t feel connection; I didn’t feel attraction. What I understood, in the clearest possible way, was that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death.
I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.
I worry about the world my grandchildren will be living in when they are my ageThis was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realised that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside.
I played my part in popularising the idea that space was the final frontier.
But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is, and will remain, our only home. And that we have been ravaging it, relentlessly, making it uninhabitable.
And of all places, it is in the city where I was born that a crucial meeting of the United Nations is being held. At Cop15, the UN biodiversity summit in Montreal, taking place from 7 to 19 December, world governments will negotiate a global deal to stop the loss of biodiversity by the end of the decade. We need world leaders to give their diplomats a powerful mandate for these talks: agree on strong targets to change the way we produce food, to drastically cut pollution, and to conserve 50% of our planet’s land and ocean, with the active leadership of Indigenous peoples and local communities, who have historically been pioneers on all these necessary actions.
I worry about the world my grandchildren will be living in when they are my age. My generation is leaving them a planet that might pretty soon be barely livable for many of Earth’s inhabitants. My experience in space filled me with sadness, but also with a strong resolve. I don’t want my grandchildren to simply survive. I want them, as an old friend used to say, to be able to live long and prosper.I will do everything I can so that we can protect our one and only home. Our world leaders have an immense responsibility to do the same in Montreal.
William Shatner is a Canadian actor who played Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek for almost 30 years.
Economics as a discipline is nearly worthless. What it teaches mostly isn’t true.
Decreasing price does not always increase demand and increasing price sometimes increases demand (aka. the law of supply and demand isn’t a law.)
People do not optimize utility (by any definition that is not circular).
People are not rational.
The market is not rational.
The market does not discount the future well at all.
Competitive markets are created by government, and destroyed by private actors.
Markets do not and never have properly priced externalities and never will do so while humans remain human. The only way to price externalities properly is thru government or custom (government in drag.)
Profit or loss in any enterprise in a modern economy is a social choice, entirely based on government and social decisions and mostly unrelated to fundamentals like energy in and energy out.
Railroads are far more efficient, energy wise than roads, but govt. subsidizes roads.
The vast majority of profit is based on market position and sustained profit is almost always based on having an unfair advantage that makes the market less competitive and therefore not have the virtues of competitive markets.
Genuine competitive markets don’t exist, and no businessman wants them to because they drive profits to almost zero.
The best economies the world ever saw went out of their way to keep wages and prices high, not to reduce them.
Any concentration of market power that is not regulated or broken up will engage in practices intended to buy/undermine government and destroy wages.
Higher CEO pay is correlated with lower company performance.
You cannot have a good economy for long without keeping the rich poor, weak and under your thumb. It is impossible.
Monetary efficiency between countries is bad. It should be hard to move large amounts money in and out of another currency or country.
Financial market efficiency is generally bad, and effectiveness and shock pads should be optimized for rather than financial efficiency.
Countries should, if it is possible, make or grow everything important inside their own borders and not trade for it.
People perform better when happy, healthy and at least moderately autonomous. The literature on this is so abundant it is silly. Bosses are authoritarian assholes because they like being authoritarian assholes who micro-manage employees. It’s what Bezos gets out of being Bezos.
Private money creation concentrated in a few hands is destructive to the economy, democracy and freedom (authority: Thomas Jefferson). It is also anti-competitive market, since you can’t compete with people who create money out of thin air.
Moderate levels of inflation are good, not bad, if they include assets, because they take away the control of people who won the past so they don’t control the present and the future.
Taxes should be low on ordinary people and high on anyone rich, including wealth and estate taxes. No one should be rich because their parents were.
People who lend money should lose that money if the person who they loaned it to can’t afford to repay it. The function of lending is “I know how to pick people who will use the money well.” If you can’t do that you deserve to lose the money, and govt shouldn’t collect it for you
bankruptcy should be easy, fast and leave people whole. Economically crippled people are not in the interest of society as a whole.
A UBI’s main function is allowing people to do what they want to do, and forcing bosses to make jobs good, not shitty.
Pensions should simply be handled by government or a general UBI.
Comparative advantage is a terrible strategy for improving your economy.
Free trade is garbage for most countries.
Raising the minimum wage is not correlated with increased unemployment
The unemployment rate measures supply driven wage push inflation pressure, not how many peole can’t get a job.
Initial capital for capitalism was primarily acquired by theft, first of European commons, then of non-European land, people and resources.
Essentially everything Economics teaches is wrong. If and when their prescriptions for action are followed, disaster ensues. With almost no exceptions every country which ever developed did so by not doing what economists say to do.
Economics also has a morally corrosive affect on those who study it. People mostly don’t free ride or otherwise act according to the maxims of economics: but people who have studied economics do.
Because economics is wrong and harmful about almost everything, and because economists do not say “please don’t follow our advice”, Economics should probably be banned and all Economics faculties shut down.
There was a time when driving a long-haul truck was a pretty good job. They had organized a strong union, and had decent wages, conditions, health care benefits, and more. It was said that in order for a person to get a job in that field, someone else had to retire.
(Yeah, I am quite aware that much of the Teamsters union leadership has been often extremely corrupt and in cahoots with organized crime. That sort of nefarious activity never benefits the rank-and-file workers!)
After deregulation began around 1980, many trucking companies sprung up that were anti-union, and required their drivers to work longer hours and more miles for less pay and fewer benefits. Right now, the annual turnover rate in the trucking industry is over 90% per year! Think about what that means!
Very simply, this is because driving a long-haul truck is now such a crappy job that workers very frequently quit. That’s why one sees billboards advertising for anybody with a Commercial Drivers’ License (CDL), because the companies are desperate for warm bodies behind those wheels. One result of all these brand-new, inexperienced drivers, is that since 2009, there has been a serious increase in the number of fatal crashes involving large trucks and buses> Not only the absolute number of crashes, but also if you divide the number of such crashes by the total number of miles driven.
See these two graphs that I prepared using data from the US DOT. While this data does not go past 2018, my understanding is that the pronounced upward trend continued into the current pandemic era as well. Part of the reason is that drivers are exhausted — IIRC they generally don’t get paid for all of the time that they have to wait around for somebody either to load or unload their truck, nor for time stuck in traffic: just by the mile.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the many truckers that have to poop and pee into little containers in their sleeping compartments, because there is nowhere else to do that? Not fun.
It looks like nearly a 50% increase in the total number of fatal crashes from 2009 to 2018
If all long-haul truck drivers organized themselves properly into a strong, honest union, and were able to prevail against the billionaires and banks that own the big trucking firms, they could do a lot of good for themselves and the public as a whole by reducing their actual work hours to something manageable, thus avoiding exhaustion and many of the accidents and near-misses that happen when a driver is drowsy. In addition, with better pay and benefits and more reasonable hours, then we would have many fewer people uninsured or bankrupt, more stable family lives, more home ownership, and all the rest.
It would be a hell of a struggle though, because the bankers and billionaires (including Jeff Bezos, who owns the Amazon juggernaut) that own those trucking lines do not want to reduce their profit margins.
Remember: if all long-haul bus and truck drivers were to go on strike, then the whole country would grind to a halt.
It would be a far better struggle than the idiotic MAGA caravan that is currently going around the DC beltway, whose main complaints seem to be that they don’t like any of the COVID vaccines and that they think that the last election was stolen.
Judging by the signs on their vehicles, that pitiful handful of deluded men that I saw on the Beltway a few days ago appear to think that 20-to-1 odds **against** you is a good bet — because those who are unvaccinated are 20 or more times likely to get seriously sick and die from COVID than those who are fully vaxxed and boosted. (link)
I guess that’s the job of fascists: to prevent working people from uniting against the actual ruling class of billionaires and bankers, and instead to get workers to fight each other along racial, ethnic, or linguistic lines.
Michael Hudson explains, among other things, why we have high inflation: it is a way for the 1%, the ruling class, to get wealthier at the expense of the rest of us.
I don’t pretend to understand economics — after all, I’m just a lowly retired math teacher. But Hudson’s arguments are really chillingand extremely wide-ranging, but not easy to digest.
[Interviewer: W]hy do you think central banks are are shifting to gold?
MICHAEL HUDSON: They’re protecting themselves against US political aggression. The big story last year was – if a country keeps its reserves and US dollars, that means they’re holding US Treasury securities. The US Treasury can simply say, “We’re not going to pay you.”
And even when a country like Venezuela tried to protect itself by holding its money in gold, where is it going to hold it? It held it at the Bank of England. And the Bank of England said, “Well, we’ve just been told by the White House that that they’ve elected a new president of Venezuela, Mr. Guaidó. And we don’t recognize the president that the Venezuelans elect[ed], because Venezuela is not part of the US orbit.”
So they grabbed all of Venezuela’s gold and gave it to the basically fascist opposition, to the ultra right-winger. The Americans say, “We’re going to recognize an opposition leader; we’re going to pick him out of thin air and take all the money away from Venezuela.”
Countries all over, from Russia to China to the Third World, think the United States is going to just grab [their] money, any time at all. The dollar is a hot potato, because the US, basically, it looks like, is prepping for war over the Ukraine; it’s prepping for war with Russia; it’s prepping for war with China.
It has declared war on almost the entire world that does not agree to follow the policies that the State Department and the military dictate to it.
So other countries are just scared, absolutely scared of what the United States is doing. Of course, they’re getting rid of dollars.
The United States said, “Well, you know, if we don’t like what Russia does, we’re going to cut off the banking contact with the SWIFT, the interbank money transfer system.” So if you do hold your money in dollars, you can’t get it.
I guess the classic example is with Iran. When the Shah was overthrown. Iran’s bank was Chase Manhattan Bank, which I was working for, as a balance-of-payments analyst.
And Iran had foreign debt that it paid promptly every three months, and so it [the new regime] sent a note to the bank, “Please pay our bondholders.” And Chase got a note from the State Department saying, “Don’t do what Iran wants; don’t pay.”
So Chase just sat on the money. It didn’t pay the bondholders. The US government and the IMF declared Iran in default of paying, even though it had all the money to pay the bondholders.
And all of a sudden, they said now Iran owes the entire balance that’s due, on the theory that if you miss one payment, then you default, and we’re going to make Iran do what the Fed didn’t make Chase Manhattan, and Citibank, and Goldman Sachs do. They couldn’t pay and transfer, but they weren’t pushed under bankruptcy.
So by holding your money in the US bank, the US bank does whatever the government tells it to, and it can drive any country bankrupt at any point.
If other countries pass a tariff against US goods that the US doesn’t like, it can just essentially not pay them on whatever they hold in the United States, whether they hold reserves in American banks, or whether they hold reserves in the Treasury or the Fed, the United States can just grab their money.
And so the United States has broken every rule in the financial book, and it’s a renegade; it’s a pirate.
And other countries are freeing themselves from piracy by saying, “The dollar is a hot potato. There is no way that we can believe them. You can’t make a contract with the American government.”
Ever since the Native Americans tried to make land contracts in the 19th century with them, the United States doesn’t pay any attention to the contracts signed. And President Putin says it’s “not agreement capable.”
So how can you make a financial arrangement with a country whose banks and State Department and financial department are not agreement capable? They’re bailing out.
And what’s the alternative? Well, the only alternative is to hold each other’s currencies, and to do something that, for the last 2,000 years, the world has liked gold and silver, and so they’re putting their money into gold because it’s an asset that doesn’t have a liability behind it.
It’s an asset that, if you’re holding it, not England, not the New York Fed – the German government has told the New York Fed, “Send us back to the gold that we have on deposit there for safekeeping. It’s not safekeeping anymore.
Planeload after planeload of gold is being flown back to Germany from the U.S., because even Germany – satellite as it is – is afraid that the United States may not like something Germany does, like if Germany imports gas from Russia, will America just grab all its gold and say, “You can’t have it anymore; we’re fining you.”
The United States has become lawless. And so of course you can’t trust it; it’s like a wild cat bank in the the 19th century.
[Ed. Note: On October 26, a subset of DC council members (Phil Mendelson, Janeese Lewis George, Robert White, Brianne Nadeau, Mary Cheh, Brooke Pinto, and Charles Allen) heard hours of testimony on two bills that would change the governance structure of DC’s office of the state superintendent of education (OSSE).
One of the bills in the hearing would make OSSE an independent agency, while the other bill (co-sponsored by Lewis George and Robert White) would ensure its oversight by the elected state board of education (SBOE) and permit DCPS staff to run for elected office. In support of a change in governance, council members cited OSSE’s clear conflict of interest (wherein both it and DCPS now report to the mayor); the fact that many of our Black students are not achieving well; and OSSE’s withheld or undiscovered information about attendance, suspensions, and graduation rates in all DC publicly funded schools.
Public witnesses in support of the legislation noted that OSSE’s current governance shuts out the people most affected by its policies: parents, school staff, and students. In the meantime, true accountability for schools remains impossible when “bad news out of OSSE means loss of votes for the mayor” (per inimitable DCPS parent and ed researcher Betsy Wolf). Those opposing the legislation (mostly charter and ed reform interests) argued that it puts progress at risk, while adding a “burden” to schools and altering the “streamlined decision making” (our deputy mayor for education’s term) that currently exists.
Pointed exchanges occurred with questioning by Ward 4 council member Janeese Lewis George of the hearing’s sole government witness, deputy mayor for education Paul Kihn. In two sessions well worth the view (about 4:57:58 to 5:13:20 and 5:39:35 to 5:51:20 in the video), Lewis George asked Kihn about enrollment, use of federal covid relief funds, loss of Head Start funds, and retention of teachers. After about 5 minutes, a frustrated Kihn said the questions felt like a pop quiz and noted that he was used to responding in writing (!). Lewis George replied that she submitted the questions ahead of time, so not only had Kihn time to prepare answers, but also that this process ensured the answers got on the record verbally.
But beyond the (now) well-known and brutal history of our state education agency’s accountability gaps, the council testimony of Ward 4 lawyer and DCPS parent Robin Appleberry elegantly connected that history to the last 19 months of our pandemic—and to the idea and ideals of DC democracy itself.
Read on–and be sure to weigh in on the legislation before the record closes on November 9.]
By Robin Appleberry
Thank you, council, for holding this important hearing. My name is Robin Appleberry, and I am a parent in Ward 4. I have lived in DC for over 20 years, and my children have attended our neighborhood public schools for over 7 years. Based on my family’s experiences and the core principles of democracy, inclusion, and accountability that I know all of you embrace, I urge you to support the DC State Education Agency Independence Amendment Act, sponsored by Councilmember Lewis George, as well as sensible amendments to realize its goals.
Mr. Chairman, when you disbanded this council’s committee on education almost a year ago, you stated that every member of this council is now responsible for education. I agree. You and others on this council speak often about your commitment to equity in education. I applaud that commitment. And many of you have spoken powerfully about why statehood is critical to democracy and justice for DC. For example, last March Chairman Mendelson testified to Congress on behalf of this entire body that independent, locally elected representation is “the only way to ensure a . . . system that is sensitive to community values” and “the only way to give residents a full, guaranteed and irrevocable voice.” I agree. And those same commitments and principles should compel you to support the moderate and sensible reform proposed by the Lewis George legislation.
At the heart of your many statements to the people of this city and to Congress is the notion of checks and balances, the idea that power is unjust and unsustainable without transparency, accountability, and–perhaps most important–the participation of those directly affected.
But that is exactly what we have with unchecked mayoral control over schools.
Families living the reality of public education in DC have no reliable information and no real voice in the policies that shape our children’s health, safety, growth and well being. And let’s be clear–the majority of these children and families are Black, Latine, recent immigrant or otherwise in communities subject to vast historic and continuing inequity. So when we call for equity but oppose accountability to those most affected, we are performing, not leading.
Reopening during the pandemic is a perfect example: at every decision point in the last 19 months, the mayor has obscured, mischaracterized, withheld, or even refused to collect essential health data; infantilized, disempowered, and discounted the lived experiences of children, families, and educators; and misled the public and this council about the critical factors such as building safety, digital resource distribution, behavioral support services, staffing, and more. The message to me from the mayor, the chancellor, the deputy mayor for education and OSSE throughout the pandemic has been crystal clear: We know better than you what is best for your child. And not only should you trust us to decide that for your family, you should not ask us to explain ourselves, to show that our commitments are met, or even to share the data on which we rely to make decisions.
Experience has made plain that without the accountability and oversight that only a truly independent body can provide, the mayor and those who report to her answer only to this council, which cannot possibly serve as a close and comprehensive check on that consolidated power.
Even when this council identifies a serious gap and musters the collective will to act, its ability to remedy the situation is profoundly limited, by procedure and by bandwidth. We can look at the recent emergency legislation enacted by this council just weeks ago, which did not even manage to ensure that any student living with a medically vulnerable family member can learn virtually until the child can be vaccinated against covid-19. Would anyone here feel comfortable sending a member of their household to spend all day, every day in a building that may or may not have adequate ventilation with hundreds of unvaccinated kids who may or may not be wearing masks properly, and then to come home every night to live with a family member undergoing cancer treatment? If this is not what we would accept for our families, why do we accept it for anyone, and why is emergency city council intervention our only means of addressing these issues?
This is just an example. Whatever your views on reopening–and reasonable minds absolutely can land in different places–I hope we all agree that decisions affecting children and families should be made not for children and families but with us, and with transparency and accountability. Elected representatives with real oversight authority are the only way to provide that. Just as we don’t want congressional representatives from Utah or Florida deciding how we in DC can live, love, and keep each other safe, neither should our schools be run in secrecy by a handful of people who don’t meaningfully answer to the people whose lives they affect.
I want to emphasize that simply making OSSE into an independent agency is not enough–we need elected officials with the resources and authority to engage in meaningful oversight and to hold leaders accountable. We don’t just need someone to document when a DC agency is, for example, failing to fix HVAC systems, reporting buildings as safe when they are not, failing to conduct enough covid tests, or seeking ways to obscure the results of those tests. We need real checks and balances–a body to ensure that policies and practices actually change. An independent OSSE without the oversight and accountability of resourced, elected SBOE officials is not going to get us there.
It’s undeniable that education is at the very core of what this city is and what it can be. Education is not a perk of a robust economy, a luxury for the privileged, or a consumer good for the savvy. It is a human right to which every single child in this city is entitled, and it is the only way–the only way—for us to become a city that thrives. No amount of painted street slogans, hip restaurants, or new condos will save us if we give up on inclusive democracy and excellent, equitable education for all. By any measure, that is not what we have now.
In this moment, when you look at how the children of our entire city are faring under unchecked mayoral control, it is evident that the system is not “sensitive to community values” and we have failed to “give residents a full, guaranteed and irrevocable voice.” How can we ask Congress to respect democracy, when we ourselves do not?
I urge you to take a reasonable and balanced approach to restoring community voice in our schools by adopting the DC State Education Agency Independence Amendment Act, along with targeted amendments to that bill to enhance equity, inclusion, transparency and accountability for all our children and families. Thank you.
In an 1860 speech commemorating radical abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Frederick Douglass argued that slavery would only end if the slave owner feared the violent retribution of the enslaved.
On December 3rd, 1860, Frederick Douglass was set to address an anti-slavery rally at Boston’s Tremont Temple Baptist Church, held to commemorate the death of the radical abolitionist John Brown and to mark the one-year anniversary of his ill-fated raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry Virgina. Boston being Boston, the gathering was attacked by what Frederick Douglass’ Paperdescribed as a “gentlemen’s mob.” The mob was not composed of “practiced ruffians.” Instead, as the paper wrote, its “rank and file, not less than its leaders, claim position with the upper classes of Boston society. They were gentlemen of the ‘DOLLAR STAMP,’ well dressed, well conditioned, well looking, and doubtless, on occasions, pass very well for gentlemen.” Joined by the the city’s mayor and supported by the Boston police, they were determined “to preserve the union of Boston pockets with Southern money” by shutting down any anti-slavery activities.
After a series of intense melees that saw Douglass fighting “like a trained pugilist” to get to the rostrum, only to be torn from the podium by the police and thrown down the stairs of the Tremont Temple, it was decided to move the meeting to the Joy Street Baptist Church, even though its trustees tried to lock their doors on their pastor. If the aim of the attack was to stop Douglass and other abolitionists from speaking, the attacks had the opposite effect, adding fuel and focus to the anti-slavery efforts embodied by Brown.
Douglass’ speech that night, reproduced below, was a strident endorsement of what he called the “John Brown way.” Abolition, declared Douglass, would never occur if society appealed to the morality of the slave owner. Slavery would only end if the slave owner feared the violent retribution of the enslaved. “We must make him [the slave owner] feel that there is death in the air about him,” Douglass declared, “that there is death in the pot before him, that there is death all around him.”
Frederick Douglass was often as ambivalent about John Brown as a person as he was about his abolitionist strategy. He did not participate in Brown’s Chatham, Ontario convention to raise money and recruit personnel for the raid on Harper’s Ferry. He refused to join the raid itself. Yet as the slavocracy became more entrenched and militant in their defense of their evil institution, Douglass also understood that radical abolitionism was the only way forward to freedom.
Speech on John Brown, at Joy Street Baptist Church, Boston, December 3, 1860
Frederick Douglass
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: – I occupied considerable attention this morning, and I do not feel called upon to take up much of the time this evening. There are other gentlemen here from whom I desire to hear, and to whom, I doubt not, you wish to listen.
This is a meeting to discuss the best method of abolishing slavery, and each speaker is expected to present what he regards as the best way of prosecuting the anti-slavery movement. From my heart of hearts I endorse the sentiment expressed by Mr. Phillips, of approval of all methods of proceeding against slavery, politics, religion, peace, war, Bible, Constitution, disunion, Union – (laughter) – every possible way known in opposition to slavery is my way. But the moral and social means of opposing slavery have had a greater prominence, during the last twenty-five years, than the way indicated by the celebration of this day — I mean the John Brown way. This is a recent way of opposing slavery; and I think, since it is in consequence of this peculiar mode of advocating the overthrow of slavery that we have had a mob in Boston today, it may be well for me to occupy the few moments I have in advocating John Brown’s way of accomplishing our object. (Applause.)
Sir, we have seen the number of slaves increase from half a million to four millions. We have seen, for the last sixty years, more or less of resistance to slavery in the U.S. As early as the beginning of the U. S. Government, there were abolition societies in the land. There were abolition societies in Virginia, abolition societies in Maryland, abolition societies in South Carolina, abolition societies in Pennsylvania. These societies appealed to the sense of justice, appealed to humanity, in behalf of the slave. They appealed to the magnanimity of the slaveholders and the nation; they appealed to the Christianity of the South and of the nation, in behalf of the slave. Pictures of slavery were presented. The ten thousand enormities daily occurring in the Southern States were held up – men sold on the auction-block – women scourged with a heavy lash – men tied to the stake and deliberately burned, the blood gushing from their nose and eyes, asking rather to be shot than to be murdered by such slow torture.
The facts of these charges have been flung before the public by ten thousand eloquent lips, and by more than ten thousand eloquent pens. The humanity, the common human nature of the country has been again and again appealed to. Four millions have bowed before this nation, and with uplifted hands to Heaven and to you, have asked, in the name of God, and in the name of humanity, to break our chains! To this hour, however, the nation is dumb and indifferent to these cries for deliverance, coming up from the South; and instead of the slaveholders becoming softened, becoming more disposed to listen to the claims of justice and humanity–instead of being more and more disposed to listen to the suggestions of reason, they have become madder and madder, and with every attempt to rescue the bondman from the clutch of his enslaver, his grip has become tighter and tighter, his conscience more and more callous.
He has become harder and harder, with every appeal made to his sense of justice, with every appeal made to his humanity, until at length he has come even to confront the world with the pretension that to rob a man of his liberty, to pocket his wages, or to pocket the fruits of his labor without giving him compensation for his work, is not only right according to the law of nature and the laws of the land, but that it is right and just in the sight of the living God. Doctors of Divinity — the Stuarts and the Lords, the Springs, the Blagdens, the Adamses and ten thousand others all over the country — have come out in open defense of the slave system. Not only is this the case, but the very submission of the slave to his chains is held as evidence of his fitness to be a slave; it is regarded as one of the strongest proofs of the divinity of slavery, that the negro tamely submits to his fetters. His very non-resistance — what would be here regarded a Christian virtue — is quoted in proof of his cowardice, and his unwillingness to suffer and to sacrifice for his liberty.
Now what remains? What remains? Sir, it is possible for men to trample on justice and liberty so long as to become entirely oblivious of the principles of justice and liberty. It is possible for men so far to transgress the laws of justice as to cease to have any sense of justice. What is to be done in that case? You meet a man on the sidewalk, in the morning, and you give him the way. He thanks you for it. You meet him again, and you give him the way, and he may thank you for it, but with a little less emphasis than at first. Meet him again and give him the way, and he almost forgets to thank you for it. Meet him again, and give the way, and he comes to think that you are conscious either of your inferiority or of his superiority; and he begins to claim the inside of the walk as his right. This is human nature; this is the nature of the slaveholders.
Now, something must be done to make these slaveholders feel the injustice of their course.
We must, as John Brown, Jr. — thank God that he lives and is with us to-night! (applause) — we must, as John Brown Jr., has taught us this evening, reach the slaveholder’s conscience through his fear of personal danger. We must make him feel that there is death in the air about him, that there is death in the pot before him, that there is death all around him. We must do this in some way. It can be done. When you have a good horse, a kind and gentle horse, a horse that your wife can drive, you are disposed to keep him — you wouldn’t take any money for that horse. But when you have one that at the first pull of the reins takes the bit in his teeth, kicks up behind, and knocks off the dasher-board, you generally want to get rid of that horse. (Laughter.) The negroes of the South must do this; they must make these slaveholders feel that there is something uncomfortable about slavery — must make them feel that it is not so pleasant, after all, to go to bed with bowie-knives, and revolvers, and pistols, as they must. This can be done, and will be done — (cheers) — yes, I say will be done. Let not, however, these suggestions of mine be construed into the slightest disparagement of the various other efforts, political and moral.
I believe in agitation; and it was largely this belief which brought me five hundred miles from my home to attend this meeting. I am sorry — not for the part I humbly took in the meeting this morning — but I am sorry that Mr. Phillips was not there to look that Fay in the face (‘Hear!’). I believe that he, and a few Abolitionists like him in the city of Boston, well-known, honorable men, esteemed among their fellow-citizens- had they been there to help us take the initiatory steps in the organization of that meeting, we might, perhaps, have been broken up, but it would have been a greater struggle, certainly, than that which it cost to break up the meeting this morning. (Applause.)
I say, sir, that I want the slaveholders to be made uncomfortable. Every slave that escapes helps to add to their discomfort. I rejoice in every uprising at the South. Although the men may be shot down, they may be butchered upon the spot, the blow tells, notwithstanding, and cannot but tell. Slaveholders sleep more uneasily than they used to. They are more careful to know that the doors are locked than they formerly were. They are more careful to know that their bowie-knives are sharp; they are more careful to know that their pistols are loaded. This element will play its part in the abolition of slavery. I know that all hope of a general insurrection is vain. We do not need a general insurrection to bring about this result. We only need the fact to be known in the Southern States generally, that there is liberty in yonder mountains, planted by John Brown. (Cheers.)
The slaveholders have but to know, and they do now know, but will be made to know it even more certainly before long- that from the Alleghanies, from the State of Pennsylvania, there is a vast broken country extending clear down into the heart of Alabama — mountains where there are rocks, and ravines, and fastnesses, dens and caves, ten thousand Sebastopols piled up by the hand of the living God, where one man for defense will be as good as a hundred for attack. There let them learn that there are men hid in those fastnesses, who will sally out upon them and conduct their slaves from the chains and fetters in which they are now bound, to breathe the free air of liberty upon those mountains. Let, I say, only a thousand men be scattered in those hills, and slavery is dead. It cannot live in the presence of such a danger. Such a state of things would put an end to planting cotton; it would put an end not only to planting cotton, but to planting anything in that region.
Something is said about the dissolution of the Union under Mr. Lincoln or under Mr. Buchanan. I am for dissolution of the Union – decidedly for dissolution of the Union! Under an abolition President, who would wield the army and the navy of the Government for the abolition of slavery, I should be for the union of these States. If this Union is dissolved, I see many ways in which slavery may be attacked by force, but very few in which it could be attacked by moral means. I see that the moment you dissolve the union between the South and the North, the slave part going by itself, and doing so peaceably — as the cry is from the Tribune and the Albany Evening Journal, and other such papers, that it shall do — establishing an independent government — that very moment the feeling of responsibility for slavery in the North is at an end. But men will tell us to mind our own business. We shall care no more for slavery in the Carolinas or in Georgia than we care for kingcraft or priestcraft in Canada, or slavery in the Brazils or in Cuba.
My opinion is that if we only had an abolition President to hold these men in the Union and execute the declared provisions of the Constitution, execute that part of the Constitution which is in favor of liberty, as well as put upon those passages which have been construed in favor of slavery, a construction different from that and more in harmony with the principles of eternal justice that lie at the foundation of the government — if we could have such a government, a government that would force the South to behave herself, under those circumstances I should be for the continuance of the Union. If, on the contrary — no if about it — we have what we have, I shall be glad of the news, come when it will, that the slave States are an independent government, and that you are no longer called upon to deliver fugitive slaves to their masters, and that you are no longer called upon to shoulder your arms and guard with your swords those States — no longer called to go into them to put down John Brown, or anybody else who may strike for liberty there. (Applause.) In case of such a dissolution, I believe that men could be found at least as brave as Walker, and more skillful than any other fillibuster, who would venture into those States and raise the standard of liberty there, and have ten thousand and more hearts at the North beating in sympathy with them. I believe a Garibaldi would arise who would march into those States with a thousand men, and summon to his standard sixty thousand, if necessary, to accomplish the freedom of the slave. (Cheers.)
We need not only to appeal to the moral sense of these slaveholders; we have need, and a right, to appeal to their fears. Sir, moral means are good, but we need something else. Moral means were very little to poor John Thomas on the banks of the Wilkesbarre river, in Pennsylvania, when the slave-catchers called upon him to provide them with a breakfast at the hotel, that while in the act of serving them with their beef-steak they might fall upon him and return him to slavery. They did fall upon him; they struck him down; but, recovering himself, he ran and plunged into the Wilkesbarre. There he stood, up to his shoulders, and the slave-catchers gathered on the banks- and the moral suasion people of that vicinity gathered also on the banks — they looked indignantly on the slave-catchers. But the slave-catchers did not heed the cries of indignation and shame; they fired their revolvers until the river about that man was red with his blood, and no hand was lifted to strike down those assassins. They went off, indeed, without their victim, but they supposed he was dead.
Sir, what was wanted at that time was just what John Brown, Jr., has told us to night — a few resolute men, determined to be free, and to free others, resolved, when men were being shot, to shoot again. Had a few balls there whistled, as at Christiana, about the heads of the slave-catchers, it would have been the end of this slave-catching business there. There is no necessity of permitting it. The only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter, is to make a few dead slave-catchers. (Laughter and applause.) There is no need to kill them either — shoot them in the legs, and send them to the South living epistles of the free gospel preached here at the North. (Renewed laughter.)
But, Sir, I am occupying too much time.- (‘Go on!’ ‘Go on!’) I see a friend on my right, whose voice tonight I have not heard for many years. These troublous times in which we live, and have been living for a few years past, make that voice doubly dear to me on this occasion; and I seize this occasion, as the first that has happened to me in at least six to eight years, to say that I rejoice, most heartily rejoice, in the privilege — for a privilege I esteem it — not only of hearing Mr. Phillips’s voice, but of standing on a platform with him in vindication of free speech. (Applause.) But I hope to speak in Boston on Friday. I, therefore, will not prolong my remarks further. I thank you for this hearing. (Applause.)
Originally published in Douglass’ Monthly 3 No. 8 (January 1861). Reprinted as “Speech on John Brown, delivered in Tremont Temple, December 3, 1860,” in Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, edited by Philip Sheldon Foner and Yuval Taylor (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2000)
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