In this post, Mitchell Robinson lays out the strategy of Betsy and Dick DeVos in Michigan, which they have since exported to other states in their well-funded campaign to destroy public education and substitute for it a marketplace of for-profit charters and publicly-funded religious schools.
Robinson, a professor of music education at Michigan State, writes:
“As Michiganders know, Betsy and Dick DeVos are religious and school privatization/choice/voucher zealots. They were humiliated by the twin failures of voucher legislation in 2000 and Dick’s loss in the Michigan governor’s race to Jennifer Granholm in 2006, and these dual humiliations resulted in the development of the DeVos’ “long-game” strategy to achieve their goals of privatizing public education:
*destroy the Democrats’ biggest single source of financial support by gutting teacher unions via Right to Work legislation
*capitalize on the elimination of the charter school “cap” to explode the number of non-regulated and for-profit charter schools in the state
*use charter schools as the mechanism to “blur the lines” between public and private/religious schools
use this “blurring” of boundaries between church and state to build public support for the redistribution of public funds to religious and private schools”
In the timeline that Robinson created, he includes the infamous secret video of Dick DeVos speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2002.
He writes:
“One of my first encounters with the DeVos ideology of education was stumbling upon this video of a speech that Amway heir Dick DeVos (husband of Betsy, brother-in-law of Blackwater private mercenary army founder Eric Prince, Betsy’s brother), gave on December 3, 2002, at the Heritage Foundation (which is funded generously by the DeVos family foundations). The gist of this speech was Mr. DeVos’ argument that school privatization was an issue that was deeply divisive, and not at all popular with the public; so in order to get vouchers and privatization through the legislature a “stealth approach” was necessary: “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities.”
At least we know where she stands. She is not neutral among the different sectors of K-12 education. She doesn’t like public schools. She wants unregulated competition among charters and religious schools, all funded by taxpayers.
A few years back, I visited Michigan and spoke to a group of district superintendents who collectively represented about half the students in the state. They described Michigan’s public school choice program, which obliterated district lines. Students could go to any public school, taking their dollars with them. Every district competed with every other district to lure students because total revenues rose or fell based on enrollments. Each district spent about $100,000 a year on radio and TV advertising, trying to “poach” students from neighboring districts. No one liked this approach. No one thought it was educationally sound. It was a colossal waste of money. Add to this the competition with charters, most of which operate for profit, and you have a state school system focused on dollars as the bottom line, not students or education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And this …
http://bridgemi.com/2016/12/betsy-devoss-michigan-legacy/
This is extremely distressing. I’m left wondering what a lowly special educator can do. What kind of action will help stop or limit her influence. I worked hard on the Mass question 2 defeat. But I’m wondering if we won the battle to lose the war
While it is always enervating to watch an anti-charter, anti-testing or anti-closure battle being won in any part of our country, it is yet disheartening to get a broader look and “see” that the war against public schools — especially against teachers/students in our nation’s lowest-income neighborhoods — not only continues but has gained strength. We must continue to seek out those leaders who bind us to an overview; it is in growing numbers that we can finally win.
Robyn,
You have a smart, articulate leader in Barbara Madeloni. You beat the billionaires. You will have to do it again. With allies.
Charter expansion has been a “stealth” venture nationwide. Both sides of the aisle have conspired against public education. Interest in charter expansion is not coming from local communities. In fact. the opposite is true. Students and parents in many cities have protested, and their pleas have been ignored. The interest in charters has come from the 1% and corporations that seek access to public money. Our policymakers have passed laws providing tax breaks, credits, and other incentives to encourage charter growth while they have enacted punitive testing policies against public schools. These same legislators have received campaign funds to promote charters, all to the detriment of public schools and public employees. I would hardly say charter growth is due to a free market; it is due to a rigged system from both conservatives and so-called liberals.
VULTURE!
These Devos people are truly disgusting and its quite disturbing to think that these creatures want to do whatever they want just because they have a few more dollars than me or you. Further they made their fortune selling bull shit products in the sucker Amway game. The entire state of Michigan is now known as being a sleeze ball state whereas it use to be one of the glorious states in the US. Take for example the city of Detroit which has contaminated water issues, public schools that are not safe to work in as evident by a strike by the teachers claiming the working conditions were disgusting, peeling walls, dirty running water, broken bath, broken floors, spotty lighting… The overwhelming charter school population has taken over only because the people have continually rejected the idea of vouchers so the Devos took the next best thing according to them in their demented world and that would be charter schools. Meanwhile the schools in the state are by far the worse performing schools in the nation.. – look it up… Take a look at the city of Dearborn whereas you have sharia law being practiced as the city has deteriorated and is now controlled under sharia law by which muslims dominate the city. Their was even a case where muslim sharia law allowed christians to be stoned to death, thats right stoned to death in Dearborn, Michigan for displaying christian signs during a muslim outing. Where was the Devos money here?? The Devos who are so religious and love Christianity and want all kids to go to christian schools allowed the city of Dearborn to surrender to sharia law??? This is more about hatred people and the Devos are filled with hatred believe me. Hiding under their false “donations” to organizations are miserable, self centered people who hate the working class and believe they know it all similar to North Korea and the maniac they have to deal with there. In time devos will become minced meat when she faces the American people who have time and time again showed that they SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!!
Are you insane? Nowhere in the country is there “Sharia Law.” You’ve been listening to Trump for too long. http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/sharia.asp
The once great University of Michigan is now frowned upon by students. Many students here in NYC are telling me that they do not want to apply to Michigan due to the state and its many problems such as dirty water, high crime and poverty rates, sharia law, filty dirty disregarded public schools, loads of failing charter schools, right to work (for less) state as most people now earn peanuts there vs. when the unions existed and general motors was a glorious manufacturer who supplied glorious salaries for hard working people who then made the state glorious. But this has all disappeared now and the state of Michigan is now considered non desirable by students. The state of Michigan is now known as Saudi Arabia west.
The DFERs of the world are not neutral about education, either; they want near-total privatization as well, with only a rump, perpetually-demonized public school system to warehouse the “undesirables.’
As I see it, the major question is how hard De Vos will push for vouchers at the expense of charters. If she insists on advocating and funding disproportionately for vouchers, there’s the potential for a falling out among thieves. If she’s smart, she’ll continue the “charter schools are public schools” and use them as the point of the spear for breaking the unions (not hard to do, since the current union misleadership has gone out of its way to cultivate an uninformed and apathetic rank and file) and privatizing 80% of the education budget
There is a reader/poster here who routinely talks about obliterating district lines and having students attend anywhere they choose. Can Michigan be used in example that such a tactic doesn’t work either?
That’s the status quo in Michigan. Choice!
“Stealth approach”? Scary stuff.
“A few years back, I visited Michigan and spoke to a group of district superintendents who collectively represented about half the students in the state. . . . Each district spent about $100,000 a year on radio and TV advertising, trying to “poach” students from neighboring districts. No one liked this approach. No one thought it was educationally sound. It was a colossal waste of money.”
Not only are up against folks like the DeVos, Waltons, Broads, Gates, DFERs, I could go on and on, but we’re up against the Go Along to Get Along (GAGA)[and get their paychecks] Good German supes and adminimals who institute educational malpractices and the wastage of tax monies on marketing schemes. Those adminimal bastards have no cojones whatsoever and deserve as much derision and scorn as the aforementioned privateers.