November 25th, 2016

My friends across the nation need to educate and fight----look at where your state Foreign Economic Zones are located---especially mid-size cities like Baltimore, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Providence, Newark, Philadelphia, Oakland and Sacramento-----these are where they are installing these corporate national K-12 charters first---and I bet you will see the counties around these cities all have APPOINTED SCHOOL BOARD members with global corporate appointees MOVING FORWARD building education platforms that will expand across the state.  We just had the 5% to the 1% PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY----push for legislation for making that county APPOINTED ONLY school board for this reason-----these policies kill immigrants and black citizens most already struggling to attain quality education ----but it will take out ALL POPULATION GROUPS---so please fight for US Constitutional rights to EQUAL PROTECTION opportunity and access to education for all.

Obama was ready to do vouchers back in 2009---he did not because global Wall Street was going to use all our FEDERAL education funding outsourced to education techology and online infrastructure and did not want any of those funds heading to PAY-TO-PLAY.  That is the only reason as CLINTON/OBAMA are moving the same education policies as Bush/Trump.  Trump is now moving to vouchers because global 1%Wall Street will PRETEND the 99% of citizens are participating in these PRIVATIZATIONS by having small businesses tied to charters, outsourced after-school programs when by the end of a decade all of these opportunities will disappear-----

THEY ARE SIMPLY USING OUTSOURCING TO SMALL BUSINESSES AS PAY-TO-PLAY IN ALLOWING ALL THESE GLOBAL BAD POLICIES TO BE INSTALLED.

So, instead of an Obama sending funds for pay-to-play in US cities to an O'Malley machine-----Trump will do the same to a Hogan machine and it will again be filled with LYING, CHEATING, STEALING----CORRUPTION with most of what was hundreds of billions of dollars coming to our public school classrooms lost----oversight and accountability dismantled----

Republicans work for wealth and corporate profit and they use these privatization and voucher policies---have for several decades----to pay-to-play selecting winners and losers.....that was the importance of Federal Department of Education oversight making sure all public schools were funded equally and open to all.



Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Has Steered Money From Public Schools
By KATE ZERNIKENOV. 23, 2016


Betsy DeVos with President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Saturday. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times


It is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools than Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump’s pick as the cabinet secretary overseeing the nation’s education system.

For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run charter schools, and tried to strip teacher unions of their influence.
A daughter of privilege, she also married into it; her husband, Dick, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan a decade ago, is heir to the Amway fortune. Like many education philanthropists, she argues that children’s ZIP codes should not confine them to failing schools.
But Ms. DeVos’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in her home state of Michigan and across the country have focused little on existing public schools, and almost entirely on establishing newer, more entrepreneurial models to compete with traditional schools for students and money. Her donations and advocacy go almost entirely toward groups seeking to move students and money away from what Mr. Trump calls “failing government schools.”
Conservative school choice activists hailed her on Wednesday as a fellow disrupter, and as someone who would block what they see as federal intrusion on local schools.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, where Ms. DeVos helped push legislation establishing tax credits for scholarships to private schools, called her an “outstanding pick,” a “passionate change agent to press for a new education vision.”
“Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next,” he wrote on Facebook.


Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, called Ms. DeVos a “smart, principled small-government conservative who’s experienced in politics and versed in the relevant policy.”



But to teachers’ unions, she is anathema.


Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Ms. DeVos “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee” since the secretary of education was elevated to the cabinet level four decades ago.


Even some groups that share her support for charter schools worried that picking someone so closely identified as a champion of vouchers signaled that the Trump administration would try to starve public schools.


As a candidate, Mr. Trump proposed steering $20 billion in existing federal money toward vouchers that families could use to help pay for private or parochial schools, perhaps tapping into $15 billion in so-called Title I money that goes to schools that serve the country’s poorest children. He called school choice “the civil rights issues of our time.”

Amber Arellano, the executive director of the Education Trust-Midwest, an advocacy group in Michigan that supports charters but has been critical of a Michigan charter school law that Ms. DeVos has spent millions to defend, said the pick had “the potential to undermine the nation’s hard-won progress by diverting resources from the young people who most need them, or by failing to uphold the federal government’s responsibility to protecting the needs and interests of all students — especially the most vulnerable.”


Michigan is one of the nation’s biggest school choice laboratories, especially with charter schools. The Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids school districts have among the nation’s 10 largest shares of students in charters, and the state sends $1 billion in education funding to charters annually. Of those schools, 80 percent are run by for-profit organizations, a far higher share than anywhere else in the nation.


The DeVoses, the most prominent name in state Republican politics, have been the biggest financial and political backers of the effort.
But if Michigan is a center of school choice, it is also among the worst places to argue that choice has made schools better. As the state embraced and then expanded charters over the past two decades, its rank has fallen on national reading and math tests. Most charter schools perform below the state average.

And a federal review in 2015 found “an unreasonably high” percentage of charter schools on the list of the state’s lowest-performing schools. The number of charter schools on that list had doubled since 2010, after the passage of a law a group financed by Ms. DeVos pushed to expand the schools. The group blocked a provision in that law that would have prevented failing schools from expanding or replicating.


Ms. DeVos, 58, got into education advocacy primarily as a backer of vouchers, and has served on the board of several organizations that have campaigned for them across the country.
A ballot initiative she led to establish vouchers in Michigan failed in 2000. The next year, she established the Great Lakes Education Project, which became an ardent proponent of charter school expansion, and has donated generously to candidates who have supported it.


The Michigan law pushed by Ms. DeVos to establish charter schools 20 years ago allows an unusually large number of organizations to start such schools, yet established little mechanism for oversight. Even Republican supporters of charter schools say the law has allowed failing charter schools to expand or replicate.
Last spring, the DeVos-backed group was the chief force behind the defeat of legislation that would have established standards for identifying and closing failing schools, both charter and public, in Detroit, where a flood of charter schools in the past decade has created what even charter school supporters call chaos.


Ms. DeVos was born in Western Michigan, the more conservative and religious part of the state, where her father created a successful auto parts company. Her brother is Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the troubled private security contractor that was awarded billions in United States government contracts in the Middle East.
Like many conservatives who supported Mr. Trump, she does not support Common Core, the set of standards for what students should know at each grade level that was developed by the National Governors Association and other groups — and that has been incorrectly branded as a federal policy.


She also had not supported Mr. Trump; her family was behind Senator Marco Rubio of Florida in the Republican presidential primary.
On Wednesday, she wrote on Twitter: “I am honored to work with the president-elect on his vision to make American education great again. The status quo in ed is not acceptable.”

__________________________________________

Baltimore City and Baltimore City Hall has for several decades unofficially been using these voucher programs ------when we watch high school scholarships being handed out-----when we watch an IVY LEAGUE low-income scholars program we have watched as the best and most talented were identified and tracked into these global Wall Street education structures and every leader I see coming back to Baltimore is not working for communities--they are working as SHOW ME THE MONEY AND I WILL DO ANYTHING I'M TOLD-----GLOBAL 1% WALL STREET PLAYERS. These policies have existed in Republican states forever ---what Trump and Obama are doing is breaking into solid social Democratic cities installing these same selective and captive education policies taking away WE THE PEOPLE'S future leadership.
I shout to Baltimore's IVY LEAGUE and private school citizens---we have a lot and that is why Baltimore is so captured by Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins---I shout that these IVY LEAGUE'S are now simply global corporations with every intention of selecting future students globally----so even those families once having an pathway to these US IVY LEAGUES will see themselves falling into what RACE TO THE TOP is building for the 99% of global citizens.
Here we see exactly that-----whether white, black, or brown-----when we talk about that 5% to the 1%-----it is almost always these bright students. We must stop this capturing of our best from our public universities.

If we are going to be reduced as a society to having 99% of citizens working to enter that global 2%----then we have no more power as citizens-----and that is the point of these policies---in Asia citizens are so fearful of any blemish they are captured to one long career pathway with no choice, freedom, liberty, personal time and personal interests----it is training for work-----getting that job-----keeping that job----making sure our children make that 2%-----

 Baltimore is already like this-----as employment has been kept so scarce and selective-----people are silent about the loss of citizenship.


U.S. | Tue Apr 1, 2014 | 10:58am EDT
New York high school student accepted at all eight Ivy League schools

By Chris Francescani | NEW YORK


Decisions, decisions.


A high school senior on Long Island has been accepted at all eight of the elite Ivy League schools - Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, he told Reuters between classes on Tuesday.
"I got into my second-to-last school - Yale - and I was just astounded," said Kwasi Enin. "And then Harvard sent me an email and I was just so grateful."


Now it's time for 17-year-old to decide where to enroll. He said he has all of April to choose a school.
"I think my primary interest now is Yale," Enin said Tuesday morning, explaining that the financial aid package the New Haven, Connecticut school offered is "close" to a full, four-year scholarship.
He is awaiting financial aid packages from some of the other schools before making the big decision.
Enin, of Shirley, New York, attends William Floyd High School in nearby Mastic, New York. The son of two nurses, he wants to study medicine, he said.
Enin said all the attention he has received for his accomplishment is as unexpected as his perfect acceptance rate.
"I thought that getting into all the Ivy Leagues schools was, like, good for me - but now it's a national thing. It's kind of crazy."
This year's Ivy League admission rate among the eight prestigious private schools was 8.925 percent, according to the Washington Post.


Of 253,472 Class of 2018 applicants, 22,624 were accepted to Ivy League schools.
That's 22,616 if you don't count Enin.

____________________________________________


I showed how almost all appointments to Maryland State Board of Education are tied to wealthy counties and/or Ivy League Universities ----think what these appointments have as a goal. If we look at our public K-12 schools as MARKETS READY TO BE WON-----if we look at these Ivy League universities AS GLOBAL EDUCATION CORPORATIONS----then having a representative from a Harvard---a Stanford, a Hopkins, a Princeton or Columbia----a Berkeley or University of Chicago----all thought of now as IVY LEAGUE GLOBAL EDUCATION CORPORATIONS----then we see a state board of education fighting for market futures for each of these global education corporations-----ABSOLUTELY NO THOUGHT OF CITIZENS, STUDENTS, COMMUNITIES----they simply want a global IVY LEAGUE brand represented in each school district ready to expand and compete nationally. We have schools in city center branded for global JOHNS HOPKINS----getting all the education funding and infrastructure funding---parents, students, teachers having no say because these schools are controlled by global education NGOs and IVY LEAGUE institutions.

Maryland State Board of Education
The State Board of Education is the voice of the public in its role as policy maker for Maryland's public schools, public libraries, and vocational rehabilitation services.
It solicits the views of interested groups and the public at large on all important issues. The State Board is a 12-member body appointed by the governor. Members bring to their task a wide range of professional and civic experience. Members serve staggered four-year terms and may serve two full terms. A student member serves a one-year term.
The state superintendent of schools is chosen by the Board for a four-year, renewable term and acts as its secretary-treasurer. She does not have a vote but does have an advisory role and is the administrative head of the State Department of Education.
The Board sets the state's education policies and standards for pre-kindergarten through high school and for Maryland's public libraries, juvenile services education and vocational rehabilitation services. It passes regulations that have the force of law and is empowered to interpret the true meaning and intent of the law. It also reviews and approves three annual budgets (the Department of Education headquarters budget, the state aid to local education budget, and state-aided institutions budget) before they're passed on to the governor's office for approval or revision and then to the General Assembly for final action. The Board is also required to decide all controversies brought before it that arise under the law. Traditionally, however, the Board tempers its considerable legal power with respect for the principle of local control of schools. Each of Maryland's 24 school systems has its own board of education.


We have a Barclay and Margaret Brent falling into this Baltimore City Center scheme. Both schools are slated to simply be controlled by Johns Hopkins as global Hopkins takes all of Baltimore City Center. One watches all these corporate education structures installed into our K-12 public schools----not so public anymore------everything from STEM EMPHASIS ONLY-----to STEAM-----STEAM is simply outsourcing all liberal arts and humanities to corporate NGOs----having all of what would be individual community voice yet again controlled by these same Hopkins institutions----arts, music, literature, humanities, psychology------it is incredible how completely dominated all schools in Baltimore are----STEAM is simply an outsourcing step-----that will be defunded and ended as K-12 becomes only about STEM -----
WE THE PEOPLE KNOW THIS IS TO WHERE THESE POLICIES ARE MOVING FORWARD----BALTIMORE IS MORE CAPTURED THAN MOST US CITIES SO WAKE UP 99% BECAUSE THIS IS COMING TO YOUR NECK OF THE WOODS.
If you are a citizen in Baltimore and want a job----you must join these NGOs and not protest or fight for different policies to be employed----and all is tied to global Hopkins and its profits as a corporation. Students will soon be tracked into early childhood apprenticeships working for free advancing Hopkins' corporate projects all deemed EDUCATIONAL VALUE -ADDED BENEFIT......not for students but for global corporate profits.


 This is why in the US city deemed Foreign Economic Zone of Greater Baltimore ----moving forward to being BLOOMBERG FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE 2 NORTH AMERICA-----citizens cannot stop this horrible corporate K-12 installation----while counties surrounding Baltimore has citizens fighting for control of their school boards-----with Wall Street players in their county government moving forward these same global corporate education structures---ONE WORLD ONE GLOBAL EDUCATION ---


 Unofficial polls show NO PARENT, TEACHER, COMMUNITY likes these K-12 policies----and our community associations having leaders controlling these voices-----if citizens think they are getting an in by being in these city center schools----YOU ARE GOING TO BE LOSERS SOON ENOUGH.


HCPI Task Force
The purpose of the Homewood Community Partners Initiative (HCPI) Task Force is to monitor the progress of the HCPI agenda, and to further that agenda. The task force meets quarterly, or more frequently if needed. Specifically, the task force’s role is to encourage other partners to make commitments to HCPI, facilitate collaboration of HCPI programs and review initiatives, set priorities, create a forum for communication with member organization representatives, insure equitable attention to all neighborhoods, collectively secure resources, and build a collective effort to implement the agenda.

The HCPI Task Force Co-Chairs are



Andrew Frank
Special Advisor to the President on Economic Development, Johns Hopkins University


Karen Stokes
Executive Director, Greater Homewood Community Corp.


Ellen Janes
Executive Director, Central Baltimore Partnership

Members of the HCPI task Force include


Neighborhood Associations
Charles Village Civic Association
Greater Remington Improvement Association
Okenshawe Improvement Association
New Greenmount West Community Association
Barclay Midway Old Goucher Coalition – BMOG
Old Goucher Community Association
Charles North Community Association



Nonprofit & Other Organizations


Village Parents
Station North Arts & Entertainment
Jubilee Baltimore
Charles Village Benefits District
Healthy Neighborhoods, Inc.
Other Anchor Institutions
Union Memorial Hospital
Baltimore Museum of Art
University of Baltimore
Maryland Institute College of Art
City of Baltimore
Office of the Deputy Mayor
Baltimore Housing
JHU
Office of the President
School of Education


City Liaison, Dept. of Community & Gov’t Affairs
Businesses
Seawall Development
Waverly Main Street
Charles Village Business Association
Please contact Destiny Durso is you are interested or have questions about this task force at ddurso@centralbaltimore.org.
__________________________________________
We have discussed these 10 years of how all the Wall Street fraud and corporate frauds----all the misappropriated Federal funding earmarked to low-income have been channeled to the US 1% and their 2%----and by extension to IVY LEAGUE endowments. As we read a Harvard or a Hopkins endowments grew because of WISE INVESTMENT FIRMS-----what we know is most of this is tied to the massive frauds of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA. Our once best in the world academies that were IVY LEAGUES---are now simply Wall Street product mills-----they have been made into global corporate R and D departments and IVY LEAGUE university top executives are simply corporate executives and CEOs------
When we see a government appointed IVY LEAGUE grad----this time in education----they are working to grow MARKET-SHARE FOR THAT GLOBAL CORPORATION. Baltimore public schools are simply being transferred to Hopkins' control to be that global K-12 corporate education tracking----nothing PUBLIC SCHOOL IS HAPPENING IN BALTIMORE.
Below we see the growing global competition with Asian 'IVY LEAGUES' being the same schools for wealthy ----fighting for that global 1% and their 2%. Of course being that 2% means surrendering all morals and ethics, having talent in lying, cheating, and stealing----and this is the ethos what brought America down CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA---and is why a TRUMP -----now represents an American standard.



Why Go To Harvard When You Can Opt For An Asian Ivy League?
www.forbes.com/sites/zheyanni/2014/06/11/why-go-to-harvard-w...
Jun 11, 2014 ... American students interested in studying abroad in Asia should consider these schools. ... Under the rigorous and competitive Asian education systems, only ... but there is a growing recognition of a more global student body.


Below we see US Ivy's that are global neo-conservative as Yale, Brown, Stanford that may be selecting global students differently than a Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton etc because of different family interests------but the pressures placed on global applicants is-----YOU MUST BE NAKED NEO-LIBERAL CAPITALISTS----PRAGMATIC NILISM ONLY. These are the ANCHOR institutions in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones and it is their K-12 education corporations taking our public schools.


Leadership Higher education


Ivy League Schools Are Being Accused of a 'Just-for-Asians' Admissions Standard

• by 
• Benjamin Snyder

• @WriterSnyder

May 24, 2016, 3:33 PM EST


Including Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown
Asian-American groups are blasting Ivy League admissions, alleging that the current approach unfairly keeps aspiring students from the country’s most elite institutions.
The organizations are pressuring the U.S. Department of Education to probe universities, including Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth, for capping the number of Asian students despite a higher number of viable candidates applying for positions.
The complaint was filed Monday by the Asian-American Coalition for Education, which includes over 100 groups. It states that Asian-Americans are prevented from attending the programs and there’s a “just-for-Asians admissions standard.” Moreover, it claims that admissions counselors “often treat Asian-American applicants as a monolithic block rather than as individuals, and denigrate these applicants as lacking in creativity/critical thinking and leadership skills/risk taking.”


“We want to tell Ivy League schools and other colleges: Asian American communities are going to continue our fight, until you totally stop your unlawful discrimination against our children,” YuKong Zhao, the president of the Asian-American Coalition for Education, said in a statement emailed to Fortune.
Yale said that it selects students from a pool of over 30,000 for admission. “Most applicants have a level of accomplishment that suggests they would be capable of doing Yale work,” according to Thomas Conroy, Yale’s press secretary, in a statement to Fortune.
He added, “In conducting a holistic review, applicants are not disadvantaged in the admissions process on the basis of race or national origin.”
The news comes about a year after a complaint was filed against Harvard, which the Department of Education ultimately dismissed. Then, 64 organizations came together in an effort to allege the Ivy League university discriminated in its admissions, reported the Wall Street Journal.


“Many studies have indicated that Harvard University has been engaged in systemic and continuous discrimination against Asian-Americans during its very subjective ‘Holistic’ college admissions process,” the complaint said at the time.

Fortune has reached out to the U.S. Department of Education, Brown, and Dartmouth for comment and will will update this story if we hear back.

______________________________________


'So maybe there is an opening for Hillary or another Democratic candidate to support public school vouchers'.


CLINTON era outsourced Federal funding for housing, health care, and public schools to privatization creating these networks in each agency filled with a voucher structure.  That took our Medicare and Medicaid to voucher here in Maryland----it took funding to what was US city public schools to private schools and religious schools---and now Trump will use vouchers as PAY-TO-PLAY.  Global 1% Wall Street will throw some millions at making WE THE PEOPLE feel we are growing small businesses in education whether charter schools or after-school programs---from child-care to school wrap-around services----all the while all these public K-12 are being made more and more corporate with control moving more and more to global NGOs and Ivy Leagues like Hopkins.  Do we really see K-12 religious schools in a hyper-competitive K-12 global market share?  So, just as with social services in Baltimore from helping homeless, health care, rehabilitation ----all outsourced into a network with no oversight and accountability ---full of corruption and fraud----now being brought under STATE PRIVATE HEALTH SYSTEMS ---global health corporations----we will now watch them do the same to our strongest in the world PUBLIC K12---with our public universities simply folded into these global IVY LEAGUE corporate campuses.

The Republican policies of vouchers are simply a mechanism for tiering who, what, where, when, and how those services are administered.  Today that is the global 1% and their 2%---

This article by BROOKINGS INSTITUTE----the global far-right wing economic neo-liberal think tank for several decades opening the door for HILLARY to do what Clinton neo-liberals intended to do anyway----install K-12 education vouchers. Obama and Clinton neo-liberals spent these several years ending all MKL higher education Federal student loans and grants programs---sending them to vocational tracking career college only education.



Report


Public school vouchers: Where are the campaigns?

Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst Monday, October 5, 2015






Executive Summary


Education has been a more prominent topic in the campaigns for president than it was in the last two cycles. With respect to school choice, Republicans have been enthusiastic supporters of policies to support private school choice, including vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships, whereas Democrats strongly oppose such programs but generally are supportive of charter schools


None of the candidates has to date mentioned, much less taken a position on, what is likely to be one of the most powerful levers of K-12 education reform: open enrollment in regular public schools tied to portable funding. Systems allowing parents to choose schools within their district of residence (intra-district choice) are presently available in 55% of the nation’s largest school districts, more than double the percent of districts that offered school choice 15 years ago. In addition, programs that allow students to enroll in a school outside their home district are available in at least twenty-three states.


Because 85% of the nation’s K-12 students are educated in regular public schools and another 5% in public charter schools, advocates that support private school choice because they want to advance market-based solutions for school reform are taking their eye off the prize. Private school vouchers are politically contentious everywhere and illegal in some states. Further, the seat capacity of private schools, which presently serve less than 10% of students, is limited with respect to the need and demand for schools of choice. Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money is. School reformers will need to focus on policies that impact public schools because that’s where the students are.


There is no reason that market-based mechanisms cannot operate in the public school sector. Parental choice, flexibility in school management, funding following students, and clear information on school performance are the four cornerstones of a market-based model of school reform. When all four are present for public schools then the system can be called public school vouchers.


Federal policy to advance a system of public school vouchers could be based on a state option: a state that puts in place or strengthens a public school open enrollment system in which state and local funds follow students to any public school of choice could exercise the option of having federal funds similarly distributed. A student in a state exercising the option would have all local, state, and federal funds intended to cover the educational costs of similar students directly attached to the student in question. This particular dollar amount would be deposited to the account of the public school that enrolls the student. There are scenarios under which a state option for public school vouchers could have bi-partisan appeal.


If education is not exactly center stage in the political campaigns for the presidency, it is at least on stage and not relegated to the bit role it played in the two previous election cycles.i This is partially attributable to the growing anxiety among families about how they are going to pay for college. It is also due to the backgrounds of the candidates themselves.

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has a history in education reform that goes back to her Arkansas days, where she chaired the influential state Education Standards Committee. She pushed national standards during the presidency of her husband and, as U.S. senator, served on the committee that is responsible for education legislation. She is on record as supporting charter schools and school accountability, and has already put forward a fleshed-out policy on college affordability as part of her primary campaign.


On the Republican side, which was more crowded when I wrote the initial draft of this report than it is as I post it, several of the candidates have gubernatorial experience, which necessarily involves education, or have records in which education is a significant theme. In fact, among all the declared candidates in both political parties, those who haven’t walked the walk of education management and reform are a minority.



Unfortunately, none of the candidates has to date mentioned, much less taken a position on, what is likely to be one of the most powerful levers of K-12 education reform that is politically obtainable: open enrollment in regular public schools connected to portable funding. Systems allowing parents to choose schools within their district of residence (intra-district choice) are presently available in many of the nation’s largest school districts, including New York City, Boston, Houston, Denver, and New Orleans.ii In addition, at least twenty-three states have policies that allow inter-district public school choice, i.e., a family may choose to have their child attend a public school in a district other than the one in which the family lives.iii


Existing levels of public school choice


As depicted in the following figure, changes over time in the availability of intra-district school choice have been dramatic.iv The graph is based on data my colleagues and I have compiled from a retrospective analysis of school choice in the 100+ largest U.S. school districts, which are the districts that are covered in our annual Education Choice and Competition Index.vOnly 24 percent of districts in 2000-2001 afforded parents school choice (20 percent through easy transfers from default schools and four percent through a full-fledged open enrollment process). Today, that number has more than doubled to 55 percent of districts allowing choice. Put another way, in 2000-2001, 75 percent of the nation’s large school districts made it difficult or nearly impossible for a child to attend a public school other than the one assigned based on place of residence. Today that number has dropped to 45 percent.


The designs of intra-district choice programs differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Some are much better than others. In general, this is how they work: Prior to the beginning of the school year at the major points of transition (entry into elementary school, middle school, and high school), parents list in order of preference the regular public schools, and sometimes the charter public schools, in which they want to enroll their child. In the best designed systems, parents can list any schools in the district regardless of the family’s place of residence. The chance of obtaining admission to a school is determined by a specially designed single lottery such that a parent gains admission to their most-preferred school that has seats available when their lottery number is called. Parents of children already in attendance who wish their child to continue at a school do not have to reapply, and siblings of existing students are usually given a preference.


School districts that combine open-enrollment in regular schools with weighted student funding of schools, such that schools that lose students to more popular schools lose funding, have the preconditions in place for competition among public schools.


I say preconditions for competition because if the leaders and teachers in particular schools are laced into a straightjacket by district/state rules or union contracts in terms of how they have to deliver education, then they can’t compete with other schools on dimensions that might raise student outcomes and parent and student satisfaction. Or if the district does not provide good information to parents on how schools are performing, then parental choice is blind and can’t spur competition around dimensions of school management and activity that make a difference for students and their families.


Parental choice, flexibility in school management, funding following students, and clear information on school performance are the four cornerstones of a market-based model of school reform. When all four are present for public schools then let’s call the system public school vouchers.


There is no reason that a system based on these cornerstones cannot work within the regular public schools to spur innovation and reform. Existing research on the impact of open enrollment systems within the regular public schools, although limited in quantity, suggests that the benefits can be substantial for students from low-income families.vi At the very least such systems provide to low-income parents a modicum of the freedom of choice of public school that is available to higher income parents who can afford to purchase a home in the assignment zone of a good public school. In that sense, public school vouchers are an equity as well as a reform issue.


Out of the roughly 55 million students enrolled K-12 schools in the U.S., about 85% are in regular, non-charter public schools, with the remainder split between private schools (10%) and public charter schools (5%).vii Efforts to increase the market share of charter schools are likely to continue to bear fruit at the margins, whereas private school enrollment has been on the decline for the last decade. In the absence of a dramatic disruption in the politics of and laws governing education, regular public schools administered by local school districts will continue to educate the vast majority of American students for the foreseeable future. Efforts to reform education based on school choice simply have to focus on where the students are, and they are in public schools.
The political context



Assuming, as I do, that some of the Republican candidates for the presidency have a deep-seated and sincere interest in improving education, it would be good to see from them a little less celebratory focus on private school vouchers and tax-credits (Yes, I’m talking about their love of Nevada’s new education savings account lawviii) and more attention, which at this point would mean any attention at all, to public school vouchers.


For Republican politicians, the policy I’ve described – open enrollment in public schools, with money following children to the school of choice, information to parents to inform choice, and flexibility for schools to innovate – ought to be conceptually attractive.
There is a potential for a left-of-center embrace as well. All the large school districts that have established open-enrollment systems are heavily Democrat in registered voters and serve predominantly low-income and minority families. These are also cities and voters that have supported charter schools – another form of public school choice. So, while Republicans could support public school vouchers because of their market-based mechanisms, Democrats have already supported such programs because of their equity goals, i.e., breaking the bond between place of residence and quality of schools.
The challenge for Hillary Clinton or any Democrat running for the presidency is that teachers unions don’t like public school vouchers because they are disruptive of the education status quo, and those disruptions seldom serve the immediate interests of dues paying unionists. It is hard for a Democrat running for high office to take political positions that antagonize such an important traditional bastion of support. But Hillary is on record as supporting charter schools, and the teachers unions like them less than open enrollment in traditionally managed public schools (because charter schools are typically not unionized whereas regular public schools are). So maybe there is an opening for Hillary or another Democratic candidate to support public school vouchers.

One interesting question for conservatives, beyond why no-one is talking about open enrollment in public schools, is how a Republican candidate who wanted to promote it could do so without going down the path of top-down federal intervention to achieve it. NCLB has poisoned that well for the foreseeable future.


The state option

A solution to this conundrum would be a state option: a state that puts in place or strengthens a public school open enrollment system in which state and local education funds follow students to any public school of choice could choose to have federal education funds similarly distributed. Under the present system federal funds to support the education of students from low-income families flow to school districts through a formula related to the population of the students served by the district. The path between the district allocation and the budget of individual schools is a morass within each district, and there is no provision for federal funds to follow students across district boundaries as a result of school choice. Under the state option proposed here, a student in a state exercising the option would have all federal, state, and local funds intended to cover the educational costs of similar students directly attached to the student in question. This particular dollar amount would be deposited to the account of the public school that enrolls the student.

Note that education savings accounts such as those recently enacted in Nevada are only for use by students in private schools who transfer out of a public school. These are private school vouchers whereas the proposal here is for public school vouchers.


The state option should be seen as a legitimate federal stance from a conservative position, and bears similarities to existing federal education programs such as Pell grants for higher education. The large and inequitable fly in the ointment of previous attempts to advance portable funding at the federal level is that the federal dollars that flow to public K-12 education in many states are only a portion of the total cost of education, with the remaining funds generated by local and state taxes.ix Thus, a child bringing, say, $1,500 in federal funds to a public school other than the residentially assigned school but leaving local tax funds behind would not be a student the receiving school would want to enroll. This is because the costs of educating the student far exceed the federal revenue the student generates. This is true for intra-district choice in which state and local money follows children to the school of choice mysteriously and with delays. It is glaringly true for inter-district choice in which all of the local funds from the sending district typically stay behind and the receiving district has to make up the difference out of its own local taxpayer funds or by charging tuition to the parents of the out-of-district student.


This can be handled under the state option advocated here by only allowing states to opt into portable federal funding that require through legislation that state and district tax dollars follow students to their school of choice regardless of the public school in which the student enrolls. For example, if the district contribution to the total per pupil expenditure in the district is $4,500 then that funding would follow the student to the student’s public school of choice along with the federal and state funds whether or not that school is within the family’s district of residence.
Delaware is an example of a state with inter-district choice and a substantial local tax base for schooling that handles local funding this way, i.e., in the case of an inter-district transfer, the sending district makes payments to the receiving district based on the sending district’s local contribution to per pupil expenditure.x
The decision as to whether to offer a public school voucher will be thought of, appropriately, by conservative candidates as a state rather than a federal prerogative. Within that frame, the federal government has but to take the position that if the state wants to manage its education funding through some variant of a public school voucher then the federal government will agree to disburse its education funds within the state using the same system. Under the state option, the state is in the driver’s seat in decisions about whether to fund its schools through public school vouchers and how, in particular, to design such a system.

Geographical and cultural context



Decisions about how to deliver public education are inherently political and contentious. On the one hand, many voters and opinion leaders on the left believe that every child should and could have a good public school in their residential zip code under the administration of a traditional school district. Those who have this goal all agree that we need to spend substantially more to achieve this end, and they frequently, but not always, prefer policies that strengthen the uniformity of schools and their centralized governance, e.g., common standards and top-down management. The opposite view is market-based. Rather than, for example, expecting government monopolies to be capable of providing a good neighborhood school for every child, those holding a market-based philosophy believe that school choice and the competition it can engender are the only sure ways to weed out bad schools and promote variety and innovation in the education services that are available to parents.


Thoughtful and empirically grounded observers of these antipodes understand that there are in-betweens and that the effectiveness of any approach depends on cultural and political context. What may work best for Shanghai may not stand a chance in South Carolina. And what is best suited for areas of high population density may not be appropriate for rural areas. I, for instance, grew up in a town with one elementary school and one combined middle school/high school. The next school district was 25 miles away. My parents were immobile. Thus there was no public school choice. In similar contexts today the only type of school choice that is functionally available is on-line. Policies around inter- and intra-district school choice are irrelevant.


Still, the 100 largest school districts in the U.S., while only 1% of the total number of school districts, educate 22% of the nation’s children. And there is sufficient geographical density of schools across much of the country outside of large urban districts to support public school choice, as indicated in the following figure, where solid areas of green represent elementary school boundaries that are too close together to resolve on the map.
Public Elementary School Boundaries in the United States
xi


Summing up


There are vagaries of geography and local culture as related to school choice, many devilish details in the design and implementation of public school voucher programs, and a lack of much in the way of rigorous evidence on the impacts of such systems in the U.S. This means that those who favor open enrollment in public schools, as I do, shouldn’t expect to convince those in opposition to switch their positions, at least not based on the type of evidence presented here. However, for presidential candidates who favor market-based mechanisms of school reform as well as those who believe as a matter of equity that low-income parents should have the ability to choose a public school for their child that isn’t tied to the neighborhood where they live, the findings and evidence in this report are actionable. The way forward at the federal level is to allow states interested in doing so to package their state, local, and federal funds as a public school voucher, spendable at any public school in which the child enrolls.
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The American people are being made to look locally instead of being educated globally on global Wall Street policy aims. While WE THE PEOPLE are fighting and demanding voice on our public school boards-----an entire global framework has been installed and is being brought back to US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones. This is just one----here is Hopkins partnered with Saudia Arabia in what is a multi-national corporation---this one health care. Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Princeton-----all doing the same----all partnering overseas in various global industries---and each acting as a global education corporation---K-12 and university. So, a Johns Hopkins not only has its medical hospitals, medical school training----it has K-12 for-profit educations tied to these campuses with the goal of expanding them to other overseas nations. These K-12 are what will make their way back to Baltimore----and expand across the US as partnerships. This Saudi partner could very well be that foreign corporation brought to Baltimore and it very well could be that Baltimore corporate K-12 charter.

This is just an example----so Hopkins could bring this Saudi partner to Baltimore claiming it a foreign corporation and it would bring with it corporate education schools tied to pre-K - career training as its brand. This is to where our public K-12 are being taken.


Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare (JHAH)


Healthcare, Practitioner and Technician
Saudi Arabia - Eastern Province
Type:
Employer (Private Sector)
Employees:
500 Employees or more


About

Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare Company (JHAH) is the result of a joint venture between Saudi Aramco, a world leader in energy, and Johns Hopkins Medicine, one of the world’s leading academic health systems. This health care organization is designed to drive and enhance the wellbeing of the community in an environment of growth and learning, by providing innovative, integrated and patient-centered care to Saudi Aramco’s employees and health care beneficiaries.
Over the coming years, this global collaboration will contribute significantly to health and wellbeing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare will evolve into a health system of excellence that provides enhanced specialty and subspecialty services, new lines of treatment, research and education that address some of the most significant health care challenges in the region.


Contact us at Inquiries@JHAH.com for more information and general JHAH inquiries.

__________________
When we are told Baltimore is bringing global labor pool to take professional jobs as in IT/Health/Banking----I gave the example of engineers from Africa brought to Baltimore for jobs----we can see that it is likely these African grads came through these overseas K-university systems.  Here we see that ONE WORLD structure where these universities around the global celebrate A ST PATRICK'S DAY.

On March 10, Dr. Mahmoud Malas, a Director from Johns Hopkins University, visited RCSI Bahrain senior staff and discussed a potential collaboration between the two establishments.

We will see our K-12 being one long vocational tracking of students recruited from around the world to Baltimore's K-university education corporate campus school structure.  All of this leaves WE THE PEOPLE AS SOVEREIGN CITIZENS---tracked into the lowest tier---that being schooled to 6th grade then sent to work in a Foreign Economic Zone global factory anywhere in the world.  Those students overseas found to be BEST OF THE BEST--otherwise known as CONNECTED TO A GLOBAL MARKET Hopkins wants to exploit----will be those attending our K-12 corporate schools.

MAKING GLOBAL STUDENTS FEEL AT HOME CELEBRATING NATIONAL FESTIVALS.

THESE GLOBAL EDUCATION CORPORATIONS ARE NOT COMPETING---THEY ARE MULTI-NATIONAL CORPORATIONS WITH UNIVERSITY BOARDS INCLUDING THE GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2%----LIKE OUR MARYLAND EDUCATION BOARD FILLED WITH GRADS FROM THOSE IVY LEAGUES.

So, that Maryland School Board filled with IVY LEAGUE are tied to these global university and K-12 structures---not to citizens in Baltimore or other US Foreign Economic Zones----looking to expand market for that IVY LEAGUE brand. The global rich are not competing---they are on the global university board.

 As Baltimore City Hall throws some millions to our local citizens to BE INNOVATIVE with their own K-12 charters and after-school programs---these global education structures are simply waiting to be installed in Baltimore -------


Postgraduate Diploma in Health Professions
Education

RCSI’s Health Professions Education Centre (HPEC Dublin) and the Professional Development Unit (RCSI Bahrain) launched the
Postgraduate Diploma in Health Professions Education. The programme aims to support the faculty in their teaching role and to contribute significantly to their professional development.

Around 30 staff signed up for the course and a mix of 10 RCSI Bahrain faculty and clinicians from teaching hospitals were shortlisted to start in March. Professor Teresa Pawlikowska, Director of HPEC, and Dr Martina Crehan, Curriculum Innovator, delivered the first module of the programme and will deliver additional modules at a later stage.


“I am very happy to be in Bahrain to deliver the same programme that was delivered in Dublin, said Professor Pawlikowska, “and to contribute to the professional development of the faculty.”


Dr Kathryn Strachan, Head of Professional Development Unit (PDU) advised that “this programme is not only in line with RCSI Bahrain’s strategy for teaching and learning, but is also consistent with the Kingdom of Bahrain’s National Strategy to achieve excellence in teaching. We hope to run the programme again in the new academic year.”



Visit from Johns Hopkins University

On March 10, Dr. Mahmoud Malas, a Director from Johns Hopkins University, visited RCSI Bahrain senior staff and discussed a potential collaboration between the two establishments. Dr Malas is Associate Professor of Surgery and Director of the Center for Surgical Trials, as well as the Director of the Vascular and Endovascular Clinical Research Center at Johns Hopkins University. During his visit, he met with RCSI Bahrain President Professor Sameer Otoom, Vice
President for Academic Affairs Professor Joe McMenamin and clinical academic staff, followed by a tour of the campus.


During the meeting, discussions centred on the potential collaboration between RCSI Bahrain and Johns Hopkins University’s Clinical Research Center for Vascular Surgery, and also on establishing a combined research and clinical (surgery) elective programme for RCSI Bahrain students at Johns Hopkins’ research facilities.


Dr Malas spoke highly of one of RCSI Bahrain’s graduates who currently works for him in his research laboratory. The graduate is now planning to enter a surgical residency programme in the US and Dr Malas said he found this doctor to be excellently trained and of the same academic calibre as a Johns Hopkins’ graduate.
It was his positive experience with this doctor which led Dr Malas, to meet academic staff at RCSI Bahrain and discuss the possibility of further collaboration between them.


For the first time since the launch of the Global Greening Initiative, RCSI Bahrain took part in the campaign by lighting the campus green for three days, from St Patrick’s Day, March 17 until March 20. Global Greening is an annual initiative by Tourism Ireland to promote overseas tourism, in which major landmarks and iconic sites around the world are illuminated green for St Patrick’s Day. Some of the sites which have gone green in previous years are Niagara Falls (on both the US and Canadian sides), the London Eye, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Burj Al Arab in Dubai, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, and the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, Paris.


For the first time in Bahrain, the University joined the list of iconic landmarks as it too underwent ‘a greening’ for St Patrick’s Day. To see various Global Greening photos from around the world, check Instagram with the hashtag #GoGreen4PatricksDay
RCSI