Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation notes that the Obame education reforms failed, with a price tag of $7 billion.
Advocates of school choice treat that failure as a rationale for school choice.
But, says Kahlenberg, the research is clear that racial integration produces significant gains, whereas school choice, especially vouchers, has none.
I made a mistake. When Betsy DeVos sent written testimony about the remarkable graduation rates of virtual schools, I said she lied.
Let’s say she offered “alternate facts.”
She listed several virtual schools where she said the graduation rate exceeded 90%.
However:
They’re wrong.
The Nevada Virtual Academy, for example. Its graduation rate for the class of 2015 wasn’t 100 percent. It was 63 percent, according to Nevada’s own school report card.
Ohio Virtual Academy’s 92 percent graduation rate? Try 53 percent.
Utah Virtual Academy’s 96 percent rate? Cut it in half.
You get the point.
Where did DeVos get these inflated numbers? Questions to the Trump administration went unanswered, but they appear to have been lifted verbatim from this report by K12 Inc., the for-profit company behind the online schools listed. DeVos herself was once an investor. It would not be the first of her answers to senators that appear to have been borrowed without citation.
None of it was true. NPR says it was a mistake.
So, Okay, I apologize. She didn’t lie. Betsy DeVos misspoke. She made a mistake. Has she corrected her error? I don’t think so.
Aaron Pallas of Teachers College, Columbia University, reviewed Betsy DeVos in The Hechinger Report.
In her testimony and in her written responses, he found her to be largely evasive and misleading. In the matter of graduation rates, her answer was simply untrue.
Although there were more bright spots in the relatively polished written testimony than in her awkward oral testimony, DeVos remained evasive, and did little to address fears that she is a thoughtless proponent of the privatization of American education.
If her actions in office parallel her responses to the Senate HELP Committee, we’re in for a rocky four years.
You will enjoy these videos. The Netherlands did it first: they created a video and said if America is first, we should be second! Then other countries did their response, and the results are hilarious!
Enjoy!
Yesterday it was Eli Broad, the Los Angeles billionaire, who turned against Betsy DeVos.
Today, it is Arthur Rock, a Silicon Valley billionaire who is one of the biggest supporters of Teach for America.
They are troubled by DeVos, maybe because she is a religious zealot, maybe because vouchers might force them to compete, maybe because her brand of reform taints theirs.
Whatever it is, the reformers are embarrassed to find that they are in the same camp with Trump, whose name is anathema in California.
But, hey, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Arthur Rock, and the Walton family paved the way for DeVos with their advocacy of school choice. She is just taking it to the next step.
Take a look at the GoFundMe page to “Buy Pat Toomey’s Vote.”
When I googled, I found articles from many sources about the campaign, and a profile of the educator who started it.
She says to the few critics and skeptics who have complained, all the money raised will go to three charities:
Betsy DeVos has donated $55,800 to the campaign of United States Senator Pat Toomey.
Incidentally, despite all evidence to the contrary, Senator Toomey thinks that Betsy DeVos would be a great choice to lead the Department of Education.
Betsy DeVos has never set foot in a classroom, did not send her children to public school, cannot distinguish between proficiency and growth, and thinks that guns should be allowed in schools in the event of grizzly attacks. That fictitious grizzly is about as qualified as Ms. DeVos to run the Department of Education.
If Betsy DeVos can buy Senator Toomey’s vote, we should be allowed to do the same.
If, of course, Senator Toomey does not wish to accept any funds raised*, all money will be donated to Camp Sojourner, the Pennsylvania Arts Education Network, and the Children’s Literacy Initiative.
*or if this tongue-in-cheek fundraising page somehow constitutes a bribe, despite being eerily identical to the actions of Ms. DeVos.
** I’ve gotten enough emails about this that I suppose I have to spell this out: I am obviously not going to bribe an elected official, as that is illegal and immoral. This page is satire and all funds will go to the three PA educational charities listed above.
Mercedes Schneider has been reading the written responses that Betsy DeVos gave to the Senate Committee’s questions. One question was whether all schools receiving federal funds should be required services for children with disabilities. Her answer, in many words, can be boiled down to one word: no.
Betsy DeVos Responds to Senator Patty Murray’s Question about SPED and Private Schools
Andy Borowitz, humorist, wrote about Trump’s comments about Frederick Douglass, in which he referred to Douglass in the present tense. Trump rattled off a few names of distinguished African Americans in tribute to Black History Month. Borowitz says that Betsy DeVos wrote the names down on a piece of paper for him.
When large numbers of people send me the same article, I know that it has struck a chord. This article, by David Frum, describes the fears that many people share about Trump’s lack of respect for the norms of democracy. Frum is a conservative: he was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. He is now a senior editor at The Atlantic. He did not vote for Trump because he sensed that Trump was neither a Republican nor a conservative. He is an authoritarian.
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/513872/?client=safari
It is a long read but worth it.
Here some selections:
“If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled.”
“Yet the American system is also perforated by vulnerabilities no less dangerous for being so familiar. Supreme among those vulnerabilities is reliance on the personal qualities of the man or woman who wields the awesome powers of the presidency. A British prime minister can lose power in minutes if he or she forfeits the confidence of the majority in Parliament. The president of the United States, on the other hand, is restrained first and foremost by his own ethics and public spirit. What happens if somebody comes to the high office lacking those qualities?”
“Trump has scant interest in congressional Republicans’ ideas, does not share their ideology, and cares little for their fate. He can—and would—break faith with them in an instant to further his own interests. Yet here they are, on the verge of achieving everything they have hoped to achieve for years, if not decades.”
“A scandal involving the president could likewise wreck everything that Republican congressional leaders have waited years to accomplish. However deftly they manage everything else, they cannot prevent such a scandal. But there is one thing they can do: their utmost not to find out about it.”
“Do you have any concerns about Steve Bannon being in the White House?,” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Ryan in November. “I don’t know Steve Bannon, so I have no concerns,” answered the speaker. “I trust Donald’s judgment.”
“Asked on 60 Minutes whether he believed Donald Trump’s claim that “millions” of illegal votes had been cast, Ryan answered: “I don’t know. I’m not really focused on these things.”
“What about Trump’s conflicts of interest? “This is not what I’m concerned about in Congress,” Ryan said on CNBC. Trump should handle his conflicts “however he wants to.”
“As Ryan’s cherished plans move closer and closer to presidential signature, Congress’s subservience to the president will likely intensify. Whether it’s allegations of Russian hacks of Democratic Party internal communications, or allegations of self-enrichment by the Trump family, or favorable treatment of Trump business associates, the Republican caucus in Congress will likely find itself conscripted into serving as Donald Trump’s ethical bodyguard.”
“Donald trump will not set out to build an authoritarian state. His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself. But as he does so, he will need to protect himself from legal risk. Being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to.”
“The United States may be a nation of laws, but the proper functioning of the law depends upon the competence and integrity of those charged with executing it. A president determined to thwart the law in order to protect himself and those in his circle has many means to do so.”
Following on the great success of the campaign to “buy” Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s vote (it raised $60,000 in three days, which will be donated to charities for children in the state), a similar GoFundMe campaign has been launched in North Carolina.
It is a great consciousness-raising activity. The funds will go to an organization that supports public schools.
“Durham, N.C., February 3, 2017: When North Carolina residents Eunice Chang and Lekha Shupeck realized the only way to get Senator Richard Burr’s attention was to buy it, they launched a GoFundMe campaign to do exactly that: http://www.gofundme.com/buy-senator-richard-burrs-vote.
“Betsy DeVos gave $43,200 to Senator Richard Burr’s reelection campaign, and is getting Burr’s vote for a Cabinet seat in return. Meanwhile, as many North Carolina citizens know first-hand, Burr consistently fails to answer constituent concerns.
“He refuses to hold town hall meetings because they “don’t work for him.” It’s near impossible to get in touch with staffers in his offices: phones are “busy,” voicemail boxes are full, and emails and letters are largely ignored. Burr’s office has called his own constituents, trying desperately to get their senator’s attention, “out-of-state[rs]” and “lack[ing] civility and decorum” simply for voicing their opposition to his policy decisions. In the case of the phone campaign against DeVos’ nomination, Burr himself stated that the opposition was a “strategy hatched a long time ago” rather than a genuine outpouring of concern from North Carolina citizens.
“Clearly, that $43,200 means that DeVos gets Senator Burr’s attention and vote, while the citizens of North Carolina get dismissed and ignored by the person who is supposed to represent their interests. So if money is the only thing Senator Burr listens to, we want to put our money to work!
“Since we believe that what DeVos did by donating to Burr’s campaign was tantamount to bribery and unethical, we won’t be trying to buy his vote directly. Instead, our fundraiser donates directly to Public School Forum of North Carolina, an organization that does important work advocating for better public education in our state’s schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 