We wish you a happy and joyful holiday season. In 2024, we accomplished much: the founding of the National Center for Charter School Accountability, the publication of high-quality reports, whiteboard explainers, advocacy campaigns,expanded social media, congressional testimony, and more. We also worked with members of Congress to introduce the C.H.A.R.T.E.R. Act, which bans charters run by for-profits from receiving federal funds.
The challenges of 2025, however, will be greater than any we have faced before. We need your help.
In these final hours of 2024, please make your online tax deductible donation to NPE here.
If you to prefer to send a check, the address is below.
The Network for Public Education
PO Box 227
New York, New York 10156
At NPE, we know who is naughty and nice when it comes to supporting our public schools and their students. This year we are giving five Coal in the Stocking Awards-two for a lack of courage in standing up to the charter lobby and three for deliberately undermining public education.
Our first Coal in the Stocking Award recipient is the U.S. Department of Education for its lack of courage in implementing its own Charter School Program reform regulations. The Department awarded $2 million to a Hillsdale classical charter school, despite its white-flight demographics and misleading application, and gave multi-million CMO grants to subsidiaries of the largest for-profit charter chain in the U.S., Academica.
Our second award goes to the Michigan Legislature. Members dragged their feet and failed to pass modest transparency and accountability measures to regulate for-profit-run charter schools and ensure tax dollars went to classrooms instead of profiteers.
Our third award goes to Corey DeAngelis. Known as a culture warrior and school choice “evangelist,” he regularly denigrates public schools, mocks Pastors for Texas Children, pushes voucher funding, and complains public schools focus too much on “LGBTQ.” Graphic images of DeAngelis as a former pornography performer exposed his hypocrisy.
Our fourth award goes to Jeffrey Yass, a public school-educated billionaire who now uses his fortune to undermine public education. Yass, who lives in Pennsylvania, gave Texas Governor Abbott $10 million to replace rural Republicans who support public schools with state legislators who would support vouchers.
Our fifth and final award goes to Ohio State Senator Andrew Brenner. Each legislative session, Brenner seeks to destroy public education, which he calls “socialism” with voucher expansion and increased This session he introduced a bill to automatically close public schools with poor test scores that even his right-wing colleagues did not support.
The above awardees (and sadly, many others who deserve this award), through negligence or active engagement, furthered the privatization of public schooling. The end goal is not parental choice but rather a market-based, pay-as-you-go, fragmented for-profit system of schooling.
This is not hyperbole.
This is the plan. And it is moving at an accelerated pace.
Join the Heroes of Public Education at our April 2024 Conference
Please be sure to attend our national conference. You can register here to attend and secure a discounted room at the hotel. Following the holiday break, we will make a big announcement regarding a special speaker you will not want to miss.
