Mercedes Schneider reports that Jerry Falwell Jr. was offered the job as Secretary of Education before Betsy DeVos.
Trump, never known in the past to be a man of religious faith, shows how little importance he attaches to education.
First, the unqualified Falwell, then the unqualified DeVos.
Joshua Leibner is a National Board Certified Teacher in Los Angeles. He wrote this post.
The elephant in the room of School Reform, is, the Elephant.
When Republican Donald Trump announced his choice of Betsy DeVos to serve as his Education Secretary, The California Charter Schools Association wrote: [We] congratulate Betsy DeVos, a longtime supporter of charter schools, on her appointment as Secretary of Education. Mrs. DeVos has long demonstrated a commitment to providing families with improved public school options and we look forward to working with the administration on proposals allowing all students in California to access their right to a high quality public education.
If you have one ounce of Progressivism in your blood, that mealy-mouthed congratulations would create a lethal dose of moral leukemia. This disgusting endorsement of DeVos, a person who is one of the most hateful, gay demolishing, anti-child, free market embracing, Big Business darling, reveals clearly to Californians who CCSA is and who they put their faith in.
I’ll leave it to other columns to specifically go through all her contemptible sins in the world of education. Those yucky particulars are not the concern of this column: Betsy DeVos as emblematic of the entire Reform Education movement is my focus.
DeVos is the rich and ignorant School Reform Education Secretary that the entire School Reform movement and CCSA have pined for. Yes, they also got the President they implicitly yearned for–but more importantly, they now have the education ideology that is their entire raison d’etre and central to their cause.
In President-Elect Donald Trump (and especially in Vice President Mike Pence), they see the opportunity to have their public policy way on the federal level and translate it to local jurisdictions nationwide.
The bottom line here in California? Our Democrat candidates can no longer accept CCSA money pretending that this organization doesn’t represent America’s most heinous politics.
To be clear, there is zero degrees of separation between CCSA and the Koch Brothers.
The one great truth that Donald Trump did reveal was in the first GOP debate. There he honestly said that he “bought” politicians because he was a businessman and that’s what he is supposed to do.
CCSA is a business. A huge multi-billion dollar business.
CCSA plays both sides of the fence. It has bought the Democrats for Education Reform as well as a veritable Who’s Who of the most evil Republicans in the game today.
CCSA knows full well the disgusting, hateful, chauvinistic, anti-women, anti-immigrant, pro-life, pro-unregulated firearms, pro-rich corporate giveaways platforms of MANY of the people who support their and give it its lifeblood. They have endorsed some terrible Republicans who make life miserable for so many Californians in other economic, judicial and quality-of-life portions of their lives.
CCSA and its dark money allies give to Reform candidates across our state.
If the Democrats insist that Trump repudiate the Neo-Nazi’s and White Supremacist groups who have embraced his cause, the Democrats of California need to strongly repudiate the vile money, support and influence of CCSA. They are not fascists, but their ties to the Right and those who seek to fundamentally reshape America to regressive ends, should give concerned liberals pause.
Mike Pence is a hero to School Reformers. Pence’s home state of Indiana, is not only fraught with the dark perils of School Reform in hyper-drive, but a place where women, gays and minorities fear for their safety and liberties.
CCSA’s mouth piece in California, Campbell Brown’s The 74, is where many in the Republican Party have found a happy home. The LA School Report is owned by them and its former owner “liberal” multi-millionaire Jamie Alter-Lynton has happily partnered with Republicans who are anathema to Civil Rights, gay rights and economic justice proponents. Worse, they are proud of their associations with these politicians as long as they vote on the one issue they care about most: Education Reform. They cozy up to some of the most loathsome politicians in America.
Thus we get Betsy DeVos.
Betsy DeVos is seen as a messiah that will push through their agenda nationwide.
What does the Charter School and Ed Reform Movement share much in common with the current President Elect and many Republicans? Forgive my bluntness, but they love the Jerk Autocrat.
Look at the type of preening, aggressive narcissists whom the GOP admires: Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Scott Walker and Ted Cruz. These are men who take particular delight in their tough, bad-ass, in-you-face bravado.
To be fair, the movement also loves tough-talkin’ Reform Democratic Jerks like Rahm Emanuel who qualifies as a Republican on the Arrogance Scale. School Reform, like the GOP, adore these personalities. Flexi-Democrat and uber-autocrat, Michelle Rhee, interviewed for the Ed Secretary position with Trump, and offered her support and enthusiastic endorsement of DeVos as well. The very first person’s name floated was New York’s Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz, the Big Stick swinging Charter operator, who also has sung DeVos’s virtues.
The fealty to the wealthy, entrepreneur class is a hallmark of Education Reform. Billionaire DeVos contributed almost $10 million to Trump and is rewarded with her dream assignment. THIS is precisely business as usual and anyone who believes that Trump is going to combat the system that has rewarded him so handsomely is waiting for Godot. The billionaires used a rigged Republican/Wall Street tax system they fueled to reap untold fortunes exploiting a system that exploits the rest of society—and after a lifetime of plundering that system, live long enough to receive the holy civic term “philanthropist” from the impoverished public sector.
Here in LA, we have these autocratic personalities like Eli Broad (and in fact, his whole Broad Academy Superintendent philosophy is basically how to be a CEO Asses in the schools). Eli Broad and Donald Trump, knew how to game a system for themselves and pay off people of both parties to further their personal fortunes. In both cases, “Moral Politics” and “Ethics” were not high priorities in each of their wealth gathering operations.
Broad’s star pupil here was former LAUSD Superintendent, John Deasy, who never missed a chance to assert his authority, relishing despicable delight in exercising his bullying personality.
In contrast, these rich people have no fear of speaking their truth to labor, to unions and the teaching profession. These rich American titans claim the moral authority to speak on the behalf of the working class and the communities of color. Their grand designs for re-working education continues to favor a certain class and color of people, while never displaying a modicum of humility in their engineering.
Betsy DeVos is the epitome of the wealthy’s hubris and their oligarchic approach to education.
Trump’s selection of DeVos was as if Hollywood contacted Central Casting to provide CCSA with a person who would accurately mirror their Portrait of Dorian Gray. Her portrait is indeed reprehensible. DeVos’s beliefs of white privilege, class entitlement, stomach-churning religious imperative, grand American Exceptionalism/racist “manifest destiny” imperatives are the backbone of the charter school industrial complex.
Michelle Rhee who actually interviewed for the Ed Secretary position with Trump, offered her support and endorsement of DeVos as well.
Most Democratic candidates are quick to protect undocumented Latino children or claim that gay rights is sacrosanct here–not particularly tough positions for a Democrat in California. There are many CCSA Democrat candidates who espouse education policies that are cooked in the putrid stew of Right Wing economic and pedagogical philosophy. Predictably, they would not be happy about GOP’s barbaric social agenda, but CCSA would have any problem if any assortment of nightmarish GOP politicians controlled American education: Scott Walker? Jeb Bush? Sam Brownback? Rick Scott? Bobby Jindal? Mike Pence (they got their wish here).
In matters of education, CCSA and the Right are simpatico.
The CCSA throws enormous amount of money backing candidates across our state. Look who gratefully and self-righteously takes their money “in the name of the kids”. Think about what other positions the Ed Reform Money is supporting through their chosen candidates across the nation. Many of these politicians have a view of America and justice that is the antithesis to what Progressives demand.
It is disingenuous to believe yourself “liberal” and embrace the ideology of CCSA. There is no separation between them and who else supports them.
Again, this debate among Democrats is a long time coming. In California, where we are basically a One Party state, corporate money and influence goes to a certain sort of centrist Democrat who will back their policies. These are the Democrats who don’t care about what other policies their proponents support-or refuse to see the connection between their Education cause and the other rest of the Right’s Agenda for America.
Follow that money.
Follow that money.
Follow that money.
CCSA contributions to the Corporate Democrats in California (on the state and local level)…but elsewhere, out of the confines of our Blue World, it’s CCSA’s sister organizations that are supporting whatever Right Wing monster runs the unfortunates in other states.
If you think Donald Trump and Mike Pence are wrong about everything else in America, but got it dead right on what America’s students require, then you really can compartmentalize as delusionally as the folks who take CCSA money.
People who think of themselves as Progressives don’t have that luxury.
This is unbelievable!
The California Charter School Association pretends to be fighting for the civil rights of children by pushing school choice and undermining public schools.
Yet it wrote a note congratulating the Billionaire Queen of Vouchers, Betsy DeVos, on her nomination to be Secretary of Education:
The California Charter Schools Association congratulates Betsy DeVos, a longtime supporter of charter schools, on her appointment as Secretary of Education. Mrs. DeVos has long demonstrated a commitment to providing families with improved public school options and we look forward to working with the administration on proposals allowing all students in California to access their right to a high quality public education.
Let’s be clear. DeVos is first and foremost a supporter of vouchers. When vouchers are not available, because voters don’t approve them (as in her home state of Michigan), she supports charters. She doesn’t necessarily support “high-quality charters,” she supports low-quality charters, no-quality charters, and for-profit charters. Last spring, she and her husband spent nearly $1.5 million in campaign contributions to block legislative efforts to make charter schools accountable. Detroit is her petri dish; it is the lowest-performing urban district in the nation on NAEP measures. In addition, she and her family have also devoted large sums to anti-gay legislative campaigns.
How hypocritical can CCSA be?
Steven Singer, who teaches in Pennsylvania, lists the top ten reasons why school choice is no choice.
Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos believe that school choice is the best possible education ponies, including vouchers, charter schools, perhaps trade schools and home schooling. Maybe anyone who puts the word “School” on a building will get part of the bobanza.
Singer shows what is wrong with school choice. Here are four of his ten reasons why school choice is no choice. Open the post to see the links and read the other six:
“On the surface of it, school choice sounds like a great idea.
“Parents will get to shop for schools and pick the one that best suits their children.
“Oh! Look, Honey! This one has an exceptional music program! That one excels in math and science! The drama program at this one is first in the state!
“But that’s not at all what school choice actually is.
“In reality, it’s just a scam to make private schools cheaper for rich people, further erode the public school system and allow for-profit corporations to gobble up education dollars meant to help children succeed.
“Here’s why:
“1) Voucher programs almost never provide students with full tuition.
“Voucher programs are all the rage especially among conservatives. Legislation has been proposed throughout the country taking a portion of tax dollars that would normally go to a public school and allowing parents to put it toward tuition at a private or parochial school. However, the cost of going to these schools is much higher than going to public schools. So even with your tax dollars in hand, you don’t have the money to go to these schools. For the majority of impoverished students attending public schools, vouchers don’t help. Parents still have to find more money somewhere to make this happen. Poor folks just can’t afford it. But rich folks can so let’s reduce their bill!? They thank you for letting them buy another Ferrari with money that should have gone to give poor and middle class kids get an education.
“2) Charter and voucher schools don’t have to accept everyone
“When you choose to go to one of these schools, they don’t have to choose to accept you. In fact, the choice is really all up to them. Does your child make good grades? Is he or she well-behaved, in the special education program, learning disabled, etc.? If they don’t like your answers, they won’t accept you. They have all the power. It has nothing to do with providing a good education for your child. It’s all about whether your child will make them look good. By contrast, public schools take everyone and often achieve amazing results with the resources they have.
“3) Charter Schools are notorious for kicking out hard to teach students
“Charter schools like to tout how well they help kids learn. But they also like to brag that they accept diverse students. So they end up accepting lots of children with special needs at the beginning of the year and then giving them the boot before standardized test season. That way, these students’ low scores won’t count against the charter school’s record. They can keep bragging about their high test scores without actually having to expend all the time and energy of actually teaching difficult students. Only public schools take everyone and give everyone their all.
“4) Voucher and charter schools actually give parents less choice than traditional public schools
“Public schools are governed by different rules than charter and voucher schools. Most public schools are run by a school board made up of duly-elected members from the community. The school board is accountable to that community. Residents have the right to be present at votes and debates, have a right to access public documents about how tax money is being spent, etc. None of this is true at most charter or voucher schools. They are run by executive boards or committees that are not accountable to parents. If you don’t like what your public school is doing, you can organize, vote for new leadership or even take a leadership role, yourself. If you don’t like what your charter or voucher school is doing, your only choice is to withdraw your child. See ya.”
Jane Mayer is the New Yorker writer whose latest book is Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.
She wrote a short bio of Betsy DeVos, whose family she has studied, in that they are billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. We all need to know more about her because Trump has chosen her to be the next Secretary of Education, although she is not an educator. She is a major donor to the Michigan Republican party and perhaps the biggest donor to voucher programs in the nation.
It would be hard to find a better representative of the “donor class” than DeVos, whose family has been allied with Charles and David Koch for years. Betsy, her husband Richard, Jr. (Dick), and her father-in-law, Richard, Sr., whose fortune was estimated by Forbes to be worth $5.1 billion, have turned up repeatedly on lists of attendees at the Kochs’ donor summits, and as contributors to the brothers’ political ventures. In 2010, Charles Koch described Richard DeVos, Sr., as one of thirty-two “great partners” who had contributed a million dollars or more to the tens of millions of dollars that the Kochs planned to spend in that year’s campaign cycle.
While the DeVoses are less well known than the Kochs, they have played a similar role in bankrolling the rightward march of the Republican Party. Starting in 1970, the DeVos family, which is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, began directing at least two hundred million dollars into funding what was then called “The New Right.” The family supported conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation; academic organizations such as the Collegiate Studies Institute, which funded conservative publications on college campuses; and the secretive Council on National Policy, which the Times called “a little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country.” The Council’s membership list, which was kept secret, included leaders of the Christian right, such as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Phyllis Schlafly, and anti-tax and pro-gun groups….
In 1980, the DeVos family contributed heavily to the election of Ronald Reagan, and DeVos, Sr., was named the finance chair of the Republican National Committee. Two years later, he was removed, after calling the brutal 1982 recession a “cleansing process,” and insisting that anyone who was unemployed simply didn’t want to work. That same year, DeVos and his Amway co-founder, Jay Van Andel, were charged with criminal tax fraud in Canada. Eventually, Amway pleaded guilty and paid fines of twenty-five million dollars, and the criminal charges against DeVos and his partner were dropped. …
The marriage of Dick DeVos to Betsy Prince only increased the family’s wealth and power. Her father, Edgar Prince, had made a fortune in auto-parts manufacturing, selling his company for $1.35 billion in cash, in 1996. Her brother Erik founded Blackwater, the private military company that the government infamously contracted to work in Afghanistan and Iraq, where its mercenaries killed more than a dozen civilians in 2007.
DeVos is a religious conservative who has pushed for years to breach the wall between church and state on education, among other issues.* (The Washington Post reports that Betsy DeVos has been an elder at Mars Hill, in Grand Rapids.) Betsy, who served as the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party in the late nineties and again in the early aughts, spent more than two million dollars of the family’s money on a failed school-vouchers referendum in 2000, which would have allowed Michigan residents to use public funds to pay for tuition at religious schools. The family then spent thirty-five million dollars, in 2006, on Dick DeVos’s unsuccessful campaign to unseat Jennifer Granholm, then the Democratic governor of the state. After that campaign, the DeVos family doubled down on political contributions and support for conservative Christian causes. Members of the family, including Betsy and Dick DeVos, have spent heavily in opposition to same-sex-marriage laws in several states. According to the Michigan L.G.B.T. publication PrideSource.com, Devos and her husband led the successful campaign to pass an anti-gay-marriage ballot referendum in the state in 2004, contributing more than two hundred thousand dollars to the effort. Dick Devos reportedly gave a hundred thousand dollars, in 2008, to an amendment that banned same-sex marriage in Florida. That year, Elsa Prince Broekhuizen, Betsy Devos’s mother, was a major contributor to the effort to pass Proposition 8, which made same-sex marriage illegal in California.
Think of the role of the U.S. Department of Education led by Betsy DeVos.
Will it issue a bullying curriculum? How to do it? How to avoid getting caught? What excuse to use if you are caught?
Will it issue advice on how to avoid becoming homosexual? Will it compile a list of providers of “conversion therapists” for students who are gay? Will it advise teachers on how to spot gay students and how to punish them?
Will DeVos lobby to bring back prayer in the schools? But only Christian prayer, of course.
Lots of challenges ahead if she is confirmed.
Join the campaign to stop her from being confirmed. Write your senators and urge them to vote NO on DeVos. She is not qualified or fit to be Secretary of Education.
This is not a job for someone who despises public schools and does not respect the traditional separation between church and state.
Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, wrote a blistering article about the DeVos family’s purchase of the Republican members of the Michigan legislature in return for their abandonment of any oversight of Detroit’s woeful charter schools.
The DeVos family, owners of the largest charter lobbying organization, has showered Michigan Republican candidates and organizations with impressive and near-unprecedented amounts of money this campaign cycle: $1.45 million in June and July alone — over a seven-week period, an average of $25,000 a day.
The giving began in earnest on June 13, just five days after Republican members of the state Senate reversed themselves on the question of whether Michigan charter schools need more oversight.
There’s nothing more difficult than proving quid pro quos in politics, the instances in which favor is returned for specific monetary support.
But look at the amounts involved, and consider the DeVos’ near-sole interest in the issue of school choice. It’s a fool’s errand to imagine a world in which the family’s deep pockets haven’t skewed the school debate to the favor of their highly financed lobby.
And in this case, it was all done to the detriment of children in the City of Detroit.
Deep pockets, long arms
Back in March, the Senate voted to place charter schools under the same authority as public schools in the city, for quality control and attention to population need and balance, in line with a plan that had been in the works for more than a year, endorsed and promoted by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
But when the bills moved to the state House, lawmakers gutted that provision, returning a bill to the Senate that preserved the free-for-all charter environment that has locked Detroit in an educational morass for two decades. After less than a week of debate, the Senate caved.
Even then, several legislators complained that the influence of lobbyists, principally charter school lobbyists, was overwhelming substantive debate. The effort was intense, they said, and unrelenting.
Now we know what was at stake.
Five days later, several members of the DeVos family made the maximum allowable contributions to the Michigan Republican Party, a total of roughly $180,000.
The next day, DeVos family members made another $475,000 in contributions to the party.
It was the beginning of a spending spree that would swell to $1.45 million in contributions to the party and to individual candidates by the end of July, according to an analysis by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network…
The legislation the DeVos family bought preserves a unique-in-the-nation style of charter school experimentation in Detroit.
If I wanted to start a school next year, all I’d need to do is get the money, draw up a plan and meet a few perfunctory requirements.
I’d then be allowed to operate that school, at a profit if I liked, without, practically speaking, any accountability for results. As long as I met the minimal state code and inspection requirements, I could run an awful school, no better than the public alternatives, almost indefinitely.
That’s what has happened in Detroit since the DeVos family helped push the charter law into existence 20 years ago.
On average, the schools don’t perform on state and national tests much better than public schools. A few outliers have reached remarkable heights. A few have done much worse. And charter advocates have become crafty liars in the selling of their product.
They’ll crow, for instance, that nearly twice as many of their kids do as well on national math assessments as the public schools. What they don’t tout are the numbers, which show the public schools are 8%, and the charters at 15%.
Regardless of outcome, none of the charter school establishment has been subject of a formal oversight and review that would reward the best actors and improve the worst.
Education should always be about children. But in Michigan, children’s education has been squandered in the name of a reform “experiment,” driven by ideologies that put faith in markets, alone, as the best arbiters of quality, and so heavily financed by donors like the DeVos clan that nearly no other voices get heard in the educational conversation.
It seemed odd to see that Democrats for Education Reform praised the nomination of Betsy DeVos, the hard-right crusader for vouchers and for unregulated, unaccountable charter schools.
Why would they do that? Why would any progressive Democratic group (ho, ho) endorse a woman known for her support of anti-gay, anti-progressive, pro-evangelical, white Christian causes?
Mercedes Schneider explains: DeVos gives money to DFER. Not a lot, by DeVos standards. To right-wing groups, they give millions. To DFER, not so much. They sell out cheap. They praise a woman who is by no means a progressive, appointed by a president-elect in league with white supremacists and neo-Nazis–and call themselves “Democrats for Educational Reform.” Ironic. Sad. Embarrassing. Absurd. What would you call it?
Donald Trump tweets tonight, since he has nothing else to do:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 8 hours ago
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 4 hours ago
Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!
Mike Klonsky notes that a voter recount will not be able to measure the effect of voter suppression.
In response to recounts underway in Wisconsin and North Carolina, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law President and Executive Director Kristen Clarke issued the following statement:
“Current recount efforts do not address the discriminatory impact of voter suppression laws during the 2016 election cycle. Wisconsin and North Carolina are states that were part of a coordinated campaign to make voting more difficult, particularly for African American and other minority voters. Wisconsin’s restrictive photo id law and North Carolina’s sweeping voter suppression law were among the most discriminatory efforts instituted prior to the November 2016 election. The laws in both states were the subject of protracted litigation because of their impact on African American and other minority voters. It is no surprise that these states are places where some now feel a grave injustice has occurred. Yet, none of the recount efforts underway focus on the impact of voter suppression efforts or attempt to account for those who were blocked or deterred from voting as a result of voter suppression laws in those states.
Throughout this election cycle, we received complaints from voters in Wisconsin about the state’s strict photo ID requirement which a federal court found would impair the rights of 300,000 registered voters. It is no surprise that Milwaukee County, Wisconsin shows that 51,554 fewer voters were able to participate in 2016, compared to 2012. In North Carolina, a 4th Circuit found that the state’s voter suppression law was discriminatory in purpose and effect. Yet, after the ruling on the state’s law, party official Dallas Woodhouse issued a directive encouraging local election officials to undermine the 4th Circuit’s ruling by using their discretion to cut early voting locations and hours down to a bare minimum. Officials across North Carolina heeded the call, resulting in long lines in many counties during the early voting period.
The recount efforts underway do not address pervasive discrimination that threatens American democracy. The way to strengthen public confidence in our elections and to promote transparency is to lift barriers that lock out eligible Americans from the process. This requires litigation and advocacy efforts that will uproot ongoing voting discrimination and voter suppression in our country. Among the most pressing needs is work to eliminate strict voter ID requirements, felon disenfranchisement laws that harken back to the Jim Crow era, and intimidation and harassment at the polls. This is also a time to closely analyze the Electoral College, an institution with roots that lie in debates surrounding slavery in our county.The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law remains committed to leading this important work to strengthen our democracy.”
I am on the North Fork of Long Island, where there is not much ambient light. The stars are bright and intense.
I walk the dog, the 80-poound beautiful American Muttheimer. We stop on the road. I lean back and look at the stars.
The sky is filled with them. They are bright. They twinkle. I think, some of them may have died thousands of years ago.
Then, I think, that man, that ignorant man who is to be called president, means nothing when you look at the stars. He will be gone before they twinkle again. His meanness, his ignorance, his cruelty will come and go.
We will survive. We will resist. We will persist. He will go away sooner than those dead stars.
They are beautiful. He is not.
Diane Ravitch's blog 