Today is #GivingTuesday. Please give whatever you can to the Network for Public Education and help us as we fight efforts to privatize our public schools.
The Network has generated nearly 75,000 emails to members of the Senate, urging them not to confirm Betsy DeVos, who supports charters and vouchers, not public schools.
Please open this link and add your name. Share it with your friends. Our goal is to reach 100,000 emails. We can do it.
It is wrong to appoint a Secretary of Education who opposes public schools. Her nomination should be opposed by Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans are supposed to be protectors of tradition and community values. Public education is a central American tradition. Republicans serve on local school boards and state school boards. They too should vote to oppose DeVos’ radical attack on public education.
“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”
― Garrison Keillor, “Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America”
Please stand up against the vandals who would destroy the mortar that holds the community together.
And please give generously so we can fight on your behalf and on behalf of America’s children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
After reading Russ Walsh’s take on Devos in which he urges us to call our senators I posted this on fb:
Okay folks, need some help.
The president elect has chosen an insider billionaire, Betsy Devos, with no public school experience whatsoever-never attended one, sent her kids to private schools, has never taught, been an administrator in/of public schools-nothing, zip, zilch nada experience to be the Secretary of Education. In Michigan she has been a disaster to public education, funding campaigns and lobbying for unrestricted for profit privateers (of which her husband is one) to steal tax monies that should be going to the public schools. She is a strong proponent of vouchers which have been rejected by voters in every state in which they have been voted upon. She believes in using your tax dollars to fund religious schools which in Missouri would require a constitutional amendment to happen as tax monies for religious organizations and proselytizing are expressly forbidden by that document.
I have joined in online campaigns to show our displeasure but a far more effective means is to call your senators, both of them and voice your displeasure. It took me 2 minutes per senator to do so. It is very easy to do and you actually talk with a staffer who documents your call and concerns. Here is a great source from where I started:
http://civilrights.org/action_center/…/calling-congress.html
Flooding their phone lines is known to be far more effective than emails so do both.
This retired public school teacher urges you to help out in this campaign to deny Devos the position of Secretary of Education.
Please call and share this post far and wide!
Mil Gracias, many thanks!
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Already one more call!
Quoting Arlo Guthrie:
“You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s Really sick and they won’t take him.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and They won’t take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin’ in, singin’ A bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . . Walkin’ in, singin’ a bar of “Alice’s Restaurant” and walkin’ out?
Friends,
They may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is: THE ALICE’S
RESTAURANT ANTI-MASSACREE MOVEMENT! . . . and all you gotta do to join is to Sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.” (from metrolyrics)
Hopefully we can prevent the “MASSACREE” of public education by Betsy DeVos and her ilk.
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Thank you I will. It’s nice that I don’t have to decide which politician to give to anymore- the answer is “none of them”- none of them support public schools. They made it easy!
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All of a sudden ed reformers remembered that 90% of kids attend public schools:
“That said, charters are not the panacea for closing gaps in achievement and equalizing opportunity in communities of color, as some supporters purport. The allure of charter schools has taken on a life of its own and in some cases adopted an identity not matched by reality. There appears to be a belief that merely being a charter makes a school better. Overselling the idea that sprinkling “charter dust” on a school will lead to better outcomes is equally erroneous.”
Too late, sadly. Now we have a lock-step anti-public school federal government and 38 anti-public schools state governments.
How did they not see this coming? They didn’t know that 15 years of promoting choice by bashing public schools would lead to this? They didn’t notice public schools have lost funding every one of the last 8 years and federal funding was cut beginning in 2010?
Why weren’t they concerned about public schools before Trump? They know they’re about to get rolled over, right? DeVos is an ideologue. She has zero interest in “supporting public schools”. The worse public schools do the better it is for her. And now we’re stuck with her.
http://educationpost.org/i-want-to-talk-about-what-betsy-devos-isnt-going-to-do-for-black-students/
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Here’s our new Secretary of Education. It’s pretty amazing. In this whole interview she mentions public schools once, and it’s prefaced with the word “failing”
She’s aware that 90% of kids attend the public schools she’s ideologically opposed to, right?
Freaking ridiculous. A federal agency staffed with thousands of public employees that is OPPOSED to public schools. It’s lunacy. This is where the ed reform echo chamber has led us- public schools no longer exist except as a punching bag to promote charter and private schools.
I resent paying every one of these people. They don’t work for me or for anyone else in a public school.
http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/interview_with_betsy_devos
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When DeVos and her team of public employees go out to bash public schools and promote charters and private schools can we file some kind of complaint?
I don’t want to pay for this. Surely there’s some kind of job description in the federal government that bars an anti-public school political campaign on the public dime, right?
She’s already doing it. She’s using these interviews to bash public schools and promote charters and vouchers. It’s propaganda.
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It’s all propaganda. Those with money buy the media and representatives; then they spread their lies and propaganda. It is all part of the strategy to remove the public from public education. Truth seems to no longer matter. If they repeat the lies repeatedly, it becomes perceived as “truth.” It worked for Trump.
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I am mailing my check to NPE…glad to be part of your work…our work.
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