Teach for America, which has more than 200 instructors in local classrooms, received almost $17 million; and the KIPP Foundation, a charter school operator that will be running nine schools in New Orleans this fall, received about $9 million.

In the press release announcing its 2010 summary, The Walton Foundation boasted that, through its involvement, schools in New Orleans have “improved student achievement and have closed the proficiency gap between the city and the state by 11 percentage points over the past three years.”

According to the education group Research on Reform, over 90 percent of schools in the state-run school district that is the focus of the city’s charter school movement would earn a letter grade of D or F using Louisiana’s own academic performance index.

The Walton Foundation also broke down its numbers according to initiative, with roughly a third of its spending going toward shaping public policy. To date, the group says it has distributed around $1 billion in education grants.

Charter schools in New Orleans and elsewhere post mixed results. In 2010, the University of Minnesota Law School’s Institute on Race and Poverty completed a studyexamining the charter school effect on post-Katrina New Orleans, finding the biggest school re-organization effort in the country has led to “‘a separate but unequal tiered system of schools’ that sorts white students and a relatively small share of students of color into selective, high-performing schools, while steering the majority of low-income students of color to high-poverty, low-performing schools.”

Putting a kink in the school choice argument that competition among schools promotes a scaling up of working education models, the study warned “that school choice in the form of charter schools does not by itself empower students of color to escape the negative consequences of segregation, especially when it leads them to racially segregated, high-poverty, low-performing schools.”

In another study from 2010, a team at the University of Colorado in Boulder followed the graduation rates of displaced students who were relocated to new schools after administrators closed down ones in which they were enrolled. The results, summarized in a feature that appeared in Ed, the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, show transfers hurt a pupil’s performance:

[D]ropout rates among displaced students rose from 7 to 15 percent; the likelihood of graduating fell from 71 to 49 percent. Study coauthor Matthew Gaertner, who produced calculations for this article that were not part of the published study, said displaced student test scores dropped 12 percent in reading, 9 percent in math, and 19 percent in writing compared with what they would have scored had the school not closed (using modeling developed from historic test data).

The study also included surveys and interviews with 115 displaced students in which 25 percent reported being mistreated by youths or adults at new schools, blamed on the stigma of coming from a failed school. Forty percent described a loss of friendships; 40 percent also reported weaker relationships with adults at their new school. Only 8 percent appreciated the new school’s greater program offerings. Because the study tracked students for just one year after closure it’s possible that they may perform better and feel happier as time passes.

Denver area schools and programs received just over $4 million in Walton money in 2010. The Walton family, in the person of E. Standley Kroenke, also owns several Denver sports teams, including the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and The Pepsi Center.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign determined AFC spent $730,000, the lion’s share going to Republican lawmakers and now-Governor Scott Walker, says Mike McCabe, executive director of the watchdog group. According to McCabe, AFC spent no money on behalf of Walker’s Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett.

Unlike most states, Wisconsin’s office of the secretary of state does not monitor campaign finance activity. Instead, the Madison-based Government Accountability Board serves as the oversight agency, though it’s data is limited due to a loophole in the state’s campaign donor laws. When third party groups like AFC push for candidates or legislation, often the money they put up goes to advertisements and direct mailers that do not explicitly announce endorsements. Without these “trigger words,” the state’s accountability board does not receive information on donor contributions.

Research conducted by Wisconsin Democracy Campaign picked up where the state oversight authority was legally hamstrung, requesting invoices for media ad buys from the state’s various radio and television channels. The non-profit’s total dollar calculation of AFC’s activity is a combination of mandatory reporting to the state accountability board and inquiries by WDC.

American Federation for Children Action Fund, a 527 organization, is the state arm of AFC and is required by state law to disclose its financial support during elections. Though public documents offer a limited scope of the fund’s activities, they do reveal AFC Action Fund spent $119,000 on four legislative races in 2010.

And though last year’s election season was the first appearance of AFC in Wisconsin, McCabe explains the group is a reincarnation of All Children Matter, a group that stopped going by that name after various incidents of improper electioneering came to the fore.

“[All Children Matter] figured prominently in previous Wisconsin elections,” says McCabe, “and you can see the same cast of characters involved in running American Federation for Children.”

In 2009, Betsy DeVos, current head of AFC, donated $75,000 to All Children Matter from personal holdings in her husband and father-in-law’s multi-billion-dollar corporation Amway/Alticor Inc, Alticor Global Holdings. Another major player in AFC’s current operations, Jim Walton, donated $310,000 to ACM that year. Walton is the youngest son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. The younger Walton was reported to own over $21 billion according to Forbes Magazine. He is a part of the Walton Foundation, a charity that helped sponsor AFC’s recent school choice summit in Washington, D.C. Listings from 2008 show even more staggering amounts donated to ACM by the pair. Also giving to ACM in 2008 was “Koch Industries” and the Oberndorf family. Bill Oberndorf, a founding partner of SPO Partners & Co., was featured in an AFC summit session titled “Why the Business Community Must Step Forward Now.”

Only one donor from Wisconsin was listed as a donor for the 2008 and 2009 period, Terry Kohler of Windway Capital in Sheboygan. He donated $110,000, a soupcon compared to the tens of millions given by out-of-state funders. One small city appeared in the donor list 16 times — Grand Rapids, Mich., home to the The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation and where Betsy DeVos’ Amway holdings are registered.

In 2008 All Children Matter spent $1.1 million dollars on campaign donations, but $1.3 million on salaries and administrative costs.

According to McCabe, AFC has not contacted Wisconsin Democracy Campaign to dispute the findings released today.

The initiative is a move to ask Americans to help local law enforcement by keeping their eyes peeled for “suspicious activity,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and NBA Commissioner David Stern told press at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. The emphasis toward civilian “suspicious activity reporting” has surged in recent years, but advertising campaigns and high-profile partnerships have really begun to take off.

In December, DHS joined forces with Wal-Mart, launching the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign initially in 230 Wal-Mart stores, with a target of 588 sites in 27 states. A short video plays at select checkout stations, telling shoppers to call local police if they see something suspicious. (The term “suspicious,” by the way, is rarely elaborated on or defined by DHS in campaign messages.)

Moving on to sports, DHS partnered with the NFL with its campaign at the Super Bowl in Dallas early this month. And now the NBA.

“We hope that this partnership will emphasize basically that security is a shared responsibility,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern at yesterday’s press event. “We think that sports is a terrific way to send messages, and to get people who go to events to focus on this very important message.”

Or maybe Napolitano is just a big sports fan.

“Our partnership with the NBA to bring the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign to professional basketball events throughout the nation is a vital part of our efforts to ensure the safety of players, employees and fans,” she told the press.

Inquiries have begun over how effective these campaigns are at protecting the country from terrorism. With sports fans and budget-conscious shoppers reporting “suspicious” activities every 10 minutes, does that help the security agencies or overwhelm the system?

David Rittgers, a legal policy analyst for the Cato Institute, said he thinks the national security agencies are overwhelmed with information.

“While there is value in getting a person on the street to be aware and report suspicious activities, you can also create too many false positives,” Rittgers said.

Rittgers said the Federal Bureau of Investigations receives about 700 messages a day, and the National Counterterrorism Center receives about 10,000 pieces of information daily. Clogging the system with even more reports of indiscriminate “suspicious activities” won’t necessarily bring these agencies closer to the information they need to prevent terrorist plots.

“People talk about connecting dots,” he said. “But it’s knowing which dots to connect that has value. …. The commitment to simply collect all the dots might not be as useful as a lot of people would propose.”

For example: “It’s not illegal to purchase a ski mask, it’s not illegal to purchase a gun, it’s not illegal to sit outside a bank. But it’s when you put those all together.”

The measure of success is still to be seen, but meanwhile the money is flowing.

“If You See Something, Say Something” are now being posted all over the country, according the DHS: on 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, at the Mall Of America, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and the general aviation industry.

DHS allocated $2.9 million for the campaign in 2009, but an official told CNSNews.com that the agency has only spent $500,000 on the campaign to date, saying it is focusing its efforts on partnerships –- outsourcing security, if you will. And while Napolitano told the network the campaign has resulted in the launch of several investigations, she said it’s still difficult to measure whether it will effectively deter would-be terrorists.

For instance, today The Wall Street Journal’s Damian Paletta reports on a change Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) is pushing for the benefit of a single Arkansas bank, one primarily owned by the Waltons of Wal-Mart fame no less.

Under Ms. Lincoln’s proposed change, Arvest would be excused from a provision that could require banks to raise more capital, in Arvest’s case about $115 million. Other Senate Democrats had intended only to exempt banks with less than $10 billion in capital from the provision. Ms. Lincoln wants to raise that to $15 billion, a threshold that would exempt Arvest. It is the only bank in Arkansas with between $10 billion and $15 billion of assets, though there are some in other states.

White House officials have said they don’t want changes that benefit specific companies, leery of the horse-trading that nearly sank their health-care overhaul. But the administration also can’t afford to alienate Ms. Lincoln, head of the Senate Agriculture Committee, whose support on the broader overhaul is vital to its success.

Lawmakers routinely do things to benefit organizations in their home states, often seen as “constituent service.” But Ms. Lincoln’s move could cause headaches for other Democrats because Arvest is owned by such a wealthy and politically influential company.

This is hardly the first time Lincoln has been accused of doing Wal-Mart’s work. And in other Wal-Mart-possibly-influencing-major-Senate-Democrats news, the Daily Caller has a provocative, thin story on the $20 million in donations the world’s biggest retailer has made in Illinois, purportedly to curry favor with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) over the debit card fee provision in the financial regulatory reform bill. They apparently lost that battle, if they were fighting it.

But now the swine flu has Wal-Mart under scrutiny for a very different reason: Accusations that the retailer is leaving employees infected with swine flu little choice but to come to work, due to its punitive sick leave policies.

Citing a report by the National Labor Committee, the Institute for Southern Studies’ argues on its blog Facing South that Wal-Mart is essentially contributing to the spread of swine flu by making it financially prohibitive for employees to miss work when they fall ill.

Employees of the Arkansas-based retail giant — even its food handlers — feel they have no choice but to work when they’re sick. That’s because the company gives workers demerits and deducts pay for staying home when they’re sick or caring for sick children.

It gets worse:

The situation is particularly difficult for Wal-Mart workers who are single parents. The NLC reports on an instance in which an employee got a call from her four-year-old’s preschool telling her to pick up the child, who had a fever of 103 degrees F. Despite the fact that the employee had already worked for four hours that day, she got a demerit point for leaving and lost her wages for the rest of the day.

The report says: “Parents have no choice but to load their children up with Motrin and Dimetap to mask their symptoms so they can go to school.”

Which, of course, leads to a vicious circle of other children at school becoming sick, and spreading it in their families. Not to mention the misery of a sick child facing a full day of school.

What’s particularly interesting is that Wal-Mart includes on its Website some information about swine flu, including frequently asked questions. Here’s the answer to “What should I do if I get sick?”

Stay away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick. Staying at home means that you should not leave your home except to seek medical care. This means avoiding normal activities, including work, school, travel, shopping, social events and public gatherings.

Unless you work at Wal-Mart. Then, you’d better make it in for your shift if you don’t want your pay docked or possibly lose your job. From Facing South:

Wal-Mart has a demerit system that punishes workers who cannot come to work due to illness. Employees who miss a day due to sickness receive a one-point demerit and lose eight hours of wages.

Employees with more than three absences a six-month period face discipline, and a fifth absence — even for a sick day — will result in what the company calls “active coaching” by management.

A sixth absence leads to what Wal-Mart calls “Decision Day,” when a worker can be either terminated or put on a year-long trial period during which time he or she can be fired for any infraction and cannot be promoted.

The swine flu sometimes can cause people to miss an entire week or more of work. At Wal-Mart, that could get you fired.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what the Center for Disease Control was hoping for this flu season, as it tries to contain a life-threatening virus. Wal-Mart’s labor policies have long been contentious, but this one could actually create a public safety issue. If these allegations are true, it may be time for public health officials to step in somehow, perhaps with fines for the retailer for keeping flu-stricken employees on the job. And let’s not just pick on Wal-Mart; it’s very possible that other low-wage retailers and business are doing the same thing. Maybe the best option in the absence of any government action is for customers to walk away. Is a bargain really worth it if employees are forced to work while sick with the flu — and potentially help to spread an unusually dangerous virus?

A Clinton County District Court judge gave final approval Tuesday for a deal that resolves a class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and ends with the retail giant paying up to $11 million.

The suit, which was started in 2001 by workers Sally Mussman and Ronda Harmon, included nearly 100,000 current and former Iowa workers at Wal-Mart who alleged that they were forced to skip breaks and lunches and were required to work overtime without pay. Although Wal-Mart has agreed to the $11 million deal, the company does not have to admit wrongdoing as a part of the settlement.

The Iowa case is one of more than 50 across the nation that was based on or included wage and hour violations. Last year Wal-Mart, which continues to be one of the few retailers amassing profits in a downturn economy, said it would use up to $640 million to settle the suits. At least 15 other suits are also nearing agreements, pending court approval.

“Workers at Wal-Mart have wanted to organize for a long, long time and have made efforts in various places,” says Doug Mork, organizing director for [United Food and Commercial Workers] Local 789. “But there just hasn’t been a real possibility. If their employers have been committed enough and capitalized enough to fight them to the mat on it, workers simply haven’t had the opportunity to organize under existing labor law.”

But the UFCW now vows that its capitulation to Wal-Mart is over. The union has started organizing campaigns in 17 states, including Minnesota, targeting more than 100 stores. The impetus for the organizing drive: the new administration in the White House and the possibility of passing the Employee Free Choice Act. Under the proposed legislation, workers would join a union after more than half of the workers sign a card indicating support. Under present law, an election must be held to determine whether a majority of workers are in favor of joining the union.

But with EFCA facing an uncertain future in the Congress, as well as Wal-Mart’s staunch opposition to previous unionization efforts, organizers face an uphill battle.

You can read Paul’s story here.

From her statement released yesterday:

I consider both the labor and the business communities to be my friends. However, now that we need all hands on deck, including business and labor, to get our economy moving again, this issue is dividing us. While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form.

It must be a coincidence that Arkansas-based Wal-Mart — which has donated $38,500 to Lincoln over her career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — is among the loudest opponents of both the estate tax and card check, right?

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From The Consumerist:

Americans face a tough choice Tuesday morning: watch Barack Obama’s historic inauguration, or storm department stores to take advantage of a first-come, first-serve cosmetics giveaway worth $175 million. The giveaway is the culmination of a class action suit that accused Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf, Dillard’s, Filene’s, Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue, among others, of fixing cosmetics prices. Though the giveaway runs from January 20-26, we’d be shocked if the products last for a full day.

Commenters wrote in to say they hope there’s no repeat of the fatal  Wal-Mart Black Friday door-buster stampede to mar the day.

Others took a more positive view:

Now we can afford to put lipstick on a pig!

So here’s to the land of the free. And of free stuff, too.

The suit claims that the store’s ads for deep discounts “created an atmosphere of competition and anxiety” that led to “crowd craze,” and that Wal-Mart didn’t provide adequate security for the pre-dawn crowd, estimated at about 2000 overly eager shoppers.

“When they heard of how he was eventually killed, that he died of asphyxiation, they were visibly shaken,” said the family’s lawyer, Jordan Hecht, who filed the suit against Wal-Mart, the mall owner, manager and security firm. “They are angry because this was preventable, and have therefore exercised their right to seek justice in the court,” Hecht said in a written statement.

Jdimytai Damour, a 6-foot-5, 270 pound man from Queens, was unlocking the doors of the Valley Stream Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. last Friday when shoppers burst in and trampled right over him. It took several minutes to clear enough space around him for police to get to Damour, and police officers continued to be jostled by rushing shoppers as they tried to save the man’s life.

Damour’s was one of three shopping-related deaths reported on the day after Thanksgiving.