For Immediate Release: February 7, 2017
Media Contact: Carol Burris 718-577-3276
cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org
The Network for Public Education furious over the approval of Betsy DeVos. Begins campaign to thwart any attempts to privatize schools.
The Network for Public Education (NPE) announced its campaign to oppose any attempts by the newly appointed Secretary of Education to privatize public education. In a letter to its 316,000 members, NPE vowed to continue the fight against the DeVos agenda at both the state and national level.
“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the ongoing threat to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. They do not want public school funds taken from their neighborhood schools for profiteers, charters and vouchers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.
NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the De Vos family’s massive political donations were the driving factor behind her Senate approval. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the senate that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight her agenda of school privatization as it moves forward.“
The Network for Public Education will expand its Grassroots Network, and will roll out reports, advisories and toolkits to help policymakers and parents better understand the dangers of school privatization. In the months ahead, NPE will lead both state and national campaigns.
“When it comes to fighting for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.
About the Network for Public Education
The Network for Public Education (NPE) was founded in 2013 by Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody. We are an advocacy group whose mission is to protect, preserve, promote, and strengthen public schools for both current and future generations of students. NPE has over 300,000 supporting members nationwide. For more information, please visit: networkforpubliceducation.org.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where the h€££ were all the teachers and the union when arnie dunkin and king were rammed down our throats? Yes tRump is a piece OS, but arnie dunkin, king, michael bennett, cory booker, Obama, defr, stand on children, etc… were allowed to charterize/profitize our Denver and national urban schools districts with very little protest! DeVoss will never be able to implement most of the voucher bs, but she will be assisted by neo liberal dems and phony-baloney philanthropic jack a$$es like bill-boy gates, board, and the waltons (walmart) in continued disaster-capitalism, education reformster kaos!!!
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MANY of us have been out fighting the good fight against them. MANY of us were not happy that our union endorsed Obama and Clinton. MANY of us have been fighting charters, vouchers, testing and underfunding at our local board of ed meetings, through blogs and community meetings. Donald Trump’s accusations of Fake News are completely true in regards to how the majority of MSM has covered the rise of education ‘reform’ in this country. They play a big role in spreading the false narrative of ‘failing’ schools.
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You got this right! So sickening.
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I expect she and her gang of thugs will aim most of their energy at teachers’ unions that are always easy targets for the public.
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Some clear thinking from Wayne Au regarding DeVos as our new sec of Education.:
A few quick points on the DeVos confirmation:
1. Yes, she’s terrible and this will hurt a lot of kids around the country. As others have said, Trump hates us.
2. If she weren’t confirmed, the next person up would also have been terrible.
3. Don’t romanticize the past: The last 8 years of education policy under Obama have also been about cementing free market reforms and the destruction of public education through those reforms (charters, “choice,” testing, anti-union, mayoral control, school closings, etc., etc.). So, yes, DeVos is like those reforms on steroids, but the trajectory is clear and the logics are consistent with Duncan and Obama.
4. Upside: Because many of DeVos’ policies fundamentally align with what the Dems and liberals (centrist-neoliberals) have been pushing for the last 8 years, the DeVos confirmation forces them to justify their positions and either distinguish themselves from DeVos or just go ahead and admit that they are in alignment with her – at clearly potentially great political cost.
5. The federal DOE has a relatively small budget (relatively speaking) and the Secretary of Education also has very limited power (relatively speaking). For all of us over 90% of our education funding comes from a combination of local tax base and state funding. So the K-12 strings she can pull are relatively short (even if I know they are going to screw kids in Special Education, and that is going to hurt).
6. Because of #4, there is a lot to be said for focusing our organizing at the local and state levels. If DeVos is going to be consistent, then she is going to kick A LOT of education policy down to the states. That is where a lot of the fight will now be.
7. All of that said, DeVos could really mess up higher education by making it more difficult for students to get access to loan programs – particularly if she and the rest of the Trump administration want to punish specific states and specific universities who are resisting him.
8. And all of that said, we’ve been organizing against terrible federal education reforms for decades. All the DeVos confirmation does is shift the terrain, shift our tactical focus, and give us a chance to broaden our organizing base.
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It’s a given that their #2 choice would have been Rhee or Moscowitz or or or some conservative privatizer voucher toting build one wall and tear down church state wall HOWEVER anyone else would know something about education.
What is ludicrous, scary, and sick is that FIFTY SENATORS couldn’t care less about qualifications. She BOUGHT THEM. They are afraid of the President. Lemmings. SCARED BLIND OBEDIENTS to the pres and $.
How could the most conservative privatizing 1%er Senator vote yes on this one. Others, ok (well not) but this one. What shred of credibility they had, its gone and their constituents should be scared.
Labor, health, environment – take your pick – all going to destroy decades of progress but – those are their content areas (except Dr. Carson). So of course the Senate voted them in. BUT THEY LOSE ALL CREDIBILITY by voting in a woman who does not know IDEA, state vs. federal law, and responds to the Senator from CONNECTICUT THAT GUNS IN SCHOOL ARE OK.
If they can be bought for a few thousand dollars on this – the we truly are not safe on issues of security, poverty, civil rights, health…
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Paul, I hope you get a chance to see what was said on morning joe…….it was worse than any possible right wing nonsense, because these were intelligent people who do not pay a lot of attention to education, and figure they can discuss it intelligently anyway.
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Haha & here I was tempering my opinion of that show because I happened to catch a few minutes of their articulate put-down of the Senate rebuke of Warren… I’ll continue to restrict my Morning Joe intake to a few sips monthly.
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Cross posted here, http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Network-for-Public-Educati-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Betsy-Devos_Burris_Diane-Ravitch_Education-170207-278.html#comment644306
with this comment
Here is a prime example of corruption as deep as it comes, and the evidence and HARBINGER of the future of our system of government.
The executive makes a big mistake in choosing a person who is not merely unfamiliar with the task, grossly unprepared, but one whom the people have rejected.
The democrats of our legislative branch rips her excuses to shreds, and her testimony about the need to carry guns in a school in case of grizzlies makes her a national joke.
But the GOP, whose committee members to the man — all of whom have accepted large donations from her or her family — put party first and people last.
Then the Vice President ensures that this billionaire gets the job that ensures income equality for all.
Sad! but worse, DANGEROUS, because the third branch of government, the judiciary, is not watching, nor caring, because they, too, as CITIZEN’S UNITED PROVED, are in the pockets of the DEEP STATE… the name that is given to the BILLIONAIRES BOYS & GIRLS CLUB– our ruling class of oligarchs.
You do not have to look to Somalia, to find this kind of corruption… but go to the link, because THIS IS US!
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First line of Garrison Keillor’s latest op-ed in WaPo: “The Constitution does not allow 13-year-olds to become president and after last week we can see why.”
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13 yr old’s would have been considered majority at some point in history in certain cultures. There is no way this sociopath is on par with a thirteen year old . Keillor is being insulting to 13year old’s .The
onion piece would be hilarious if wasn’t sadly true . Frankly i have trouble telling the difference between Saturday Night Live and prime time coverage of the White House .
Lets hope we can say he was a really really spectacular president when we say good bye to him in a few months . In the spirit of a national prayer .
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In case you missed today’s NYT:
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GregB
I certainly caught it and posted it on a construction union members Facebook page . It was an international that did not participate in that meeting.
When someone asked why they rejected the invitation the answer was they knew better than playing his stupid game, having dealt with him before. Some years back my NYC local’s Business manager approached Trump on behalf of and with the head of the New Orleans local’s B.M. The treatment was similar to what these fools received. Trump reminded them , “I always built union in NYC . Why are you picking on me ” Their response was he did not have a choice at the time .
A July editorial .
“A review of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s projects reveals that he hires union when project labor agreements or dominant market share force him to. But more than 60 percent of his projects developed outside New York City and Atlantic City – which includes most of his recent projects – were built nonunion. When you exclude developments with project labor agreements, that jumps to nearly 80 percent built nonunion.”
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Thank you, NPE.
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NPE did everything possible and accomplished a lot. This post lays out the work that is already beginning in spite of this major setback. The institutions vital to a democracy are under attack. One of these is public education. NPE needs all the support it can get.
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It is true and it is heartache to confirm that money is everything to live, BUT it is nothing when humanity and freedom are gone.
I put my money into where my protest is. I deeply hope and trust that all readers will put their money into their fight for their belief – against corruption and against privatization.
We do not fight for PERFECTION.
We fight for DECENCY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and DEMOCRACY. Back2basic
#RESIST
#gofundme
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Off topic but this is how we got here. How a sociopathic charlatan and his party was able to manipulate the media to win an election . How the changed nature of the news media is the culprit.
The last paragraph says it all.
“Tapper also pressed Conway about the “Bowling Green massacre,” why Trump lied about the U.S. murder rate and why he never used his trusted Twitter feed to comment about the murder of six Muslims in Quebec last month, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned as a “terrorist attack.”
“Every day there are these sprays of attack and sprays of falsehoods coming from the White House. It would be better if they were not coming from the White House, for me and for you,” Tapper told Conway during their exchange. Though Tapper’s performance drew early praise, context matters in his case as well—his corporate sponsor had also made ratings hay out of candidate Trump’s campaign-trail antics and still pays surrogates to populate CNN’s relentless panel discussions on programs that can no longer credibly fall under the heading of “news.”
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/kellyanne_conway_offers_olive_branch_more_spin_20170207
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It appears they have already removed the IDEA page from the ed.gov website. For someone who supposedly didn’t know what IDEA was?!
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Is Montessori a viable 21st century pedogological methodology in public schools?
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I see this as an opportunity. Once vouchers are distributed, families apply to the school of their choice. What if the students don’t get in? What are the ramifications? If students are denied, there should be a reason as to why. And it should be in writing! How about someone (AFL-CIO, NAACP, BATS, etc.) set-up a “how-to” guide on how to sue these other educational choices? If anything, it’ll be a massive headache!
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I watch morning joe each day on msnbc. It is a good show. But 1 hour, 1 minute into the show today, they began talking about education. I already knew how clueless Joe was, but there were five people on the panel, and it was the most disgraceful so-called discussion of education I have ever seen on a non propaganda network television show. It is indescribable, and must be viewed to be believed. (it lasts only 4 or 5 minutes). Harold Ford of the University of Michigan wound it up praising the heroism of Arne Duncan. He has someone on the faculty at U.M. capable whose style would not be to slice his head off and present it on a plate—-lucky for him. I hope you watch it, and present it. I will continue to watch Morning Joe…..I have learned to live with the reality of how stupid Joe is regarding public education , a subject they seldom discuss. Good production decision.
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I agree with Paul completely.
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