EDUCOLOR STATEMENT ON THE DEVOS CONFIRMATION
Contact: Sabrina Stevens
info@educolor.org
February 7, 2017
WASHINGTON – Following the Senate’s recent confirmation of Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, EduColor Policy Chair Khalilah Harris made the following statement on behalf of the collective:
“We are incredibly heartened to see how many people have finally stepped up to take action in support of public education. Because of this unprecedented outpouring of public opposition to Betsy DeVos–driven by her shocking lack of qualifications and preparation, her privatization agenda, and her unwillingness to affirm any commitment to the vulnerable students the US Department of Education (USED) exists to protect–what was once assumed to be a guaranteed confirmation quickly became the most hotly contested Cabinet appointment in recent history.
“But let’s be clear: as an organization committed to full educational justice for students and communities who are systematically denied access to a quality public education, we are fully prepared to resist policies and positions put forth by this Secretary of Education and this White House, and will be vigilant in protecting the important work of USED’s Office for Civil Rights. Betsy DeVos has pushed an agenda in Michigan that has devastated public education, and we have no confidence in DeVos, the Trump administration, nor its leader, whose hateful statements as a candidate and reckless and unconstitutional actions since taking office are now legendary.”
EduColor is a collective that seeks to elevate the voices of public school advocates of color on educational equity and justice. We are an inclusive cooperative of informed, inspired and motivated educators, parents, students, writers and activists who promote and embrace the centrality of substantive intersectional diversity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This raises the question, of course, of whom Devos will choose for her assistants?
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Let us hope she chooses some Grizzly Bears, who turn right around and consume her.
https://youtu.be/YexQcXnVSzg YouTube Grizzly Growling
They are so horrified by the absolutely corrupt nature of her incompetence, that they turn on her, turn her in to the “authorities”, tune her out, turn her out of the DOE, and leak her stupidity and cupidity all over the media.
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While she has squeaked by to get her contested confirmation, the “grizzly bears” needed to back her agenda may actually be nothing more, under a Trump administration, than a group much more noticeable in Washington DC these days: timidly voiceless little mice who may, rather than support her, scurry out of the room whenever she is sighted. May political chaos keep her power to a weakly tepid minimum.
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Go Sabrina! Wonder what you are doing now. Glad to know you are giving hell to the deformers.
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“No longer will our kids be trapped in too many public school systems that are too concerned with the status quo instead of student success,” Pence said before swearing in DeVos. Pence said the tie-breaking vote was the easiest vote he ever cast.
Ed reform is relentlessly negative towards public schools. I think public schools would be perfectly justified in asking that DeVos and her team just stay away.
Would charter schools welcome a Sec of Education who attacks charter schools? You know they wouldn’t. No one would expect them to. We’re just supposed to go along with what is a coordinated political campaign to attack our schools? Why? Who would volunteer for that?
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Public school students and teachers will be trapped in a maze of bad market based products designed to enrich tech companies while more unsubstantiated policy decisions will be forced on schools.
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Here’s one of DeVos’ promised “improvements” for public schools:
“RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s two virtual charter schools reported lower student withdrawal rates this year, due in part to recent legislation that allows them to change the way they calculate how many students leave each year.
North Carolina Connections Academy and North Carolina Virtual Academy both reported 5 percent student withdrawal rates this year, a major improvement from the 31 percent and 25 percent withdrawals last year, respectively.
One reason the schools appear to have improved so drastically is due to a change lawmakers made last year that changes which students are counted as withdrawals.”
Politicians changed the rules so the schools would score better.
Ohio has these schools so I can tell you what this means for public school students- it means kids go in and out of the virtual charters and land in the public school in between trips. That disrupts the classrooms of every public school kid and also makes it impossible for public schools to budget or plan.
It’s not an “improvement” for public school kids. It’s a detriment.
http://www.wral.com/nc-virtual-charter-schools-report-lower-withdrawal-rates-after-change-in-legislation/16512349/
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My hope that the extremism of Trump’s selection of DeVos will be met with active resistance from an alliance of parents, students, teachers, community members and social justice groups. All of us need to be on high alert status, and we cannot afford to be complacent. We need to assert the right of all Americans to well funded, authentic public education.
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…”embrace the centrality of substantive intersectional diversity.”
Yeah, that’s the rhetoric that’ll bring ’em to the barricades, up there with “No Pasaran!” and “We Shall Overcome.”
Sorry to be so negative, but language matters, and this kind of dead, academic/bureaucratic language is a turn off to all but those who toughed it out in the limited-enrollment Senior Seminar on Identity Politics.
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LOL.
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She had her first meet and greet with USDE staff today and some brief remarks recorded with captions at the USDE website.
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The only Black Republican Senator, Sen. Scott of S.C., made comments after the confirmation, describing, in reductionist rhetoric, how little, DeVos, is authorized to do, as Sec. of Ed, He, like all Republicans, are shamed by their votes. Scott compounded it with a defense, unworthy of American democracy.
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