-Bev Johns
On Monday and Tuesday please call the offices of our U.S. Senator Mark Kirk urging him to act on removing/modifying the Goldman Sachs Pay for Success part of S. 1177, the reauthorization of the Elementary andSecondary Education Act (ESEA which used to be called No Child Left Behind).
Sen. Kirk, despite weeks of contacts on Pay for Success, apparently has done nothing, even though he was a Member of the Conference Committee between the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate on ESEA.
I received a telephone message on Thursday from Sen. Kirk’s Washington, D.C. office saying nothing could be done by Sen. Kirk.
The actual language of S. 1177, based on concepts approved by the Conference Committee, will not be released until November 30.
Changes were being negotiated on Friday after the Conference Committee was over, and that will continue this week.
Utah is using Pay for Success to reduce special ed by 99 percent (and is the first project to actually start to pay back Goldman Sachs), and Chicago will be paying Goldman Sachs $9,100 EACH YEAR for each student NOT identified for special education (multiple payments for the same student).
Please express your concerns to Sen. Kirk’s staff on his lack of action on Pay for Success in S. 1177, and the absolute requirement for action to avoid permanent harm to special education students and their parents in Illinois. (for D.C., if you want to speak to a live person, do not take any options offered but simply wait untilsomeone answers)
U.S. Senator from Illinois Mark Kirk
Washington, D.C.: 202-224-2854
Chicago: 312-886-3506
Springfield (often no one there): 217-492-5089
Fred Klonsky 
Kirk is in the pocket of the 1%ers. He is viciously anti-union, and our concerns are not his concerns.
I’m with you, Anon.
Here’s a way to get the phone numbers-
https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials
Just received my NEA Insider. Positive mention of ESEA, & a self-congratula-
tory paragraph or two about how the NEA has helped in getting this through & closer to passage. However–NOTHING about the inclusion of Pay for Success in this package, or urging NEA members to call legislators to have this removed. Am I missing something, here?
Hmmm…we know HRC has ties with Goldman-Sachs…
I have been a “student” of Mark Kirk’s right-wing politics since he was my Congressman when I was still in the Tenth Congressional District. Kirk has never been a moderate and has always been a hawk. For years, we tried to talk to him on the issues, protested in front of his office and in his office, never got to see him until he actually attended a rally for animal rights and we caught him off guard, where he refused to answer questions on the real issues I’ve been to numerous so-called staged community forums where he talked about ash borers, presented medals to war heroes, and spoke of the glories of the Iraq War. He always put up false, misleading charts about spending abuses by Democrats but justifying billions a month on the Iraq War, a war based on lies. After the war, at another forum, when I asked him how he justified an off-balance sheet war based on lies, which was draining billions from our economy every month, he simply said to me “we won, didn’t we.”
And his answer for improving schools was never to improve the quality of education, but for teachers to check lockers for drugs and guns. He’s always been a strong “supporter” of NCLB and years ago when I told people he was with Jeb Bush on allowing discrimination in hiring and firing in schools based upon religion even if they received federal funding, people couldn’t believe it. And yet, here we are again, only worse on these two issues, war and education, and the media has portrayed him as a moderate. He’s the farthest thing from it.