During his speech to Congress last night, Teump singled out a young woman in the audience as an exemplar of the benefits of vouchers. He said:
“Joining us tonight in the gallery is a remarkable woman, Denisha Merriweather. As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.”
Mitchell Robinson, professor of music at Michigan State University, sent the following comment:
“Denisha Meriweather is not simply “an intelligent, dynamic and motivating individual whose life was changed by the school choice policies promoted by Betsy DeVos.” She’s an employee of “Step Up For Students”, a state-approved nonprofit scholarship funding organization that helps administer the very Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program she benefitted from. [My note: Step up for Students has more than $500 million in assets. https://www.stepupforstudents.org/wp-content/uploads/2012.13-SUFS-Form-990.pdf]
“Ms. Meriweather has also been writing versions of this article at least since she graduated from college in 2014. So, to date, the only job Ms. Meriweather has secured as a result of receiving her voucher is working for the organization that gave her the voucher, and trying to influence public opinion on the worth and value of vouchers.”
Why we must NOT give Betsy DeVos and school choice “a chance”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The link is broken or Step Up has taken down the page.
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Remove the “%5D” from the end and it works:
Click to access 2012.13-SUFS-Form-990.pdf
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While browsing the website of Step Up for Students,I came across its 990 report to the IRS. It showed assets in excess of $300 million. If anyone else can find it, please supply the link.
This is a tax credit program, where businesses make gifts to Step Up and get a tax credit. Step Up then gives scholarships (maximum about $5600) to students for private and religious schools. Students in these schools have no constitutional rights, as Senator Kaine pointed out at the DeVos confirmation hearing.
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Here is 14-15 990
Click to access Step-Up-For-Students-Inc-2014-tax-return-Public-Disclosure-Copy-for-website.pdf
Total assets (Part X, line 16) Beginning of year $363,784,990
End of Year $449,355,921
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Thank you for finding the 990.
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And neither do the majority of SpecEd students attending public schools. Their protections only come into play if you can afford to hire lawyers to battle your public school districts to actually provide the proper instruction that the students are supposed to be entitled to….
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MH,
Did you really have the chutzpah to write that?
You want to excuse the fact that charter schools have no obligation whatsoever to special ed students and if they can’t keep up, it’s up to the student to remain in the back of the 1st grade class until age 18 or at least until their parents get the message that their kid will be treated like dirt unless they pull him out. It’s all okay, because some public schools aren’t obeying the law and sometimes a special ed family must find a lawyer (and, fyi, there are organizations that provide free ones) to get what they are legally obligated to get.
Shame on you. I guess we might as well do what DeVos wants and say, let those unworthy children figure out their own education because they are just too expensive for the rest of us to care about.
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Yes, NYC public school parent, exactly ^^this^^.
The fact that some public school districts, and in fact, some states (see, for example, Texas: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/09/18/what-texas-did-to-its-special-education-students/?utm_term=.0a12f80825a5) are under-serving their special needs children, does not excuse or give carte blanche to charters to totally ignore, not admit, or expell or “counsel out” their special needs kids.
There is, as you said, a legal procedure for parents to follow if their special needs kids are being under-served. (And yes, it doesn’t ways work the way it is supposed to.). There is no procedure, legally, for parents of charter school students to do so, because charters are, for the most part, unaccountable to the public, and not expected to follow the IDEA.
You are being too kind to label his/her remark “chutzpah.” I would label it grossly unfeeling. And disgusting.
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Good to know about Denisha Meriweather
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To know what about her?
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link not workingÂ
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Otis,
The link connected to the 990 form for Step Up for Children. I appeal to crowd sourcing to find it.
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If you remove the “%5D” from the end and it works:
Click to access 2012.13-SUFS-Form-990.pdf
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Interesting- thanks for this. I’m trying to think if there’s one day without deception or lie from the administration.
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Another one of his sneaky tactics!
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I don’t have any problem with this woman but come on. This is political.
The whole premise is ludicrous. For every ‘failing failure of a public school student” ed reform trots out I could find them ten success stories. I could do that IN THIS TOWN let alone the whole country. This isn’t a “wealthy suburban district”. It’s an ordinary Ohio public school with a wide range of students. I know this is shocking but some of our students with various challenges actually succeed! A lot of them!
They really can’t find ONE? 4200 employees in the US Department of Education and 500-some members of Congress in 50 states and not ONE public school success story?
That defies belief. It defies belief because it’s ridiculous.
We could play this game all day, but let’s be clear-it ain’t science
DeVos can give me her voucher student and I’ll see her and raise with 10 public school students 🙂
It doesn’t “mean” anything really other than Betsy DeVos and the US Congress really really love vouchers. I myself am a bit of a public school success story. I was a lousy student and they stuck with me and I got better. According to this compelling political narrative I have just spun all of you should be cheering public schools because here I am! I’m available for interviews 🙂
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Like!
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Yesterday I found a lower income student in my son’s 8th grade class who is a successful student in a public school. Eureka!
I await his invite to the Betsy DeVos box at this political opera.
Presented with this compelling evidence DeVos will then support public schools. Why or why not? That’s what ed reform has just asked me to do.
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It’s not surprising Trump could only find ONE student that succeeded through a private school education. There aren’t that many who do.
They simply don’t do as good a job as the public schools do, with few exceptions.
That’s my takeaway, or at least the version I’ll blog or comment about.
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So what do you do? I don’t know- counter with a successful public school student?
Check and..check mate! All of the congressional lemmings will then run back over to the public school side of the rail?
Why not? That makes as much sense as backing vouchers because of this one woman.
Is it a numbers game? DeVos and her echo chamber buddies are setting policy for the whole country. If we set up a ratio and I can produce more successful public school students than successful voucher students is that a rationale for them to start supporting public schools? Why not? That’s the argument for vouchers.
It isn’t even a very smart political tactic because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
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I often feel most frustrated when thinking about the truly amazing publicity always missing on the Public School side; giving it a little thought and effort, those who wish to support teachers and all-student-inclusive public schools could be endlessly telling the nation how public schools have produced amazing person after amazing person after amazing person — because that list is truly endless.
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I’d like to point out that Ms Meriweather states that she failed third grade twice. Of note 3rd grade is a mandatory retention year with state testing in Florida. This probably means that she failed the FCAT and then use the voucher to go to a private school where FCAT testing was not required. One could use her story to suggest that performance on the third grade FCAT is not a good predictor of future success (research would support that view). If only they looked at her story and decided to stop the test and punish state assessments in Florida instead of using her story to encourage people to leave public education.
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Good catch!
😎
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I read that she works in a public school. Let’s review. Ed reform and the US Department of Education who regularly refer to public schools as “government schools” and “failing public schools” and “dead ends” and (my favorite) The Blob, produced a voucher success story who is employed at a public school.
You can’t make this up.
According to what I have been told every day for 20 years this private school success story is now a greedy self-interested public school employee who decent people shun. Unless she was somehow made pure by her private school electioneering? I need a scoreboard. I can’t keep the Enemies of Education straight anymore.
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Well, isn’t this special!?!
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And bless her heart. 🙂
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Apparently its not Trump’s poster girl it is Devos’s poster girls
“At her confirmation hearing, DeVos called out two in the audience Denisha Meriweather, an African-American student from Florida, and Nydia Salazar, a Latina student from Arizona, who were “rescued from failing schools” by voucher programs in their states.
As Wayne State University professor Mitchell Robinson explains on a Michigan based blogsite, the two women DeVos pointed to are commonly featured props in her propaganda campaign. Meriwether, he notes, is a paid employee of a Florida organization that helps administer the state’s Tax Credit Scholarship Program she used to attend a private religious school at taxpayer expense. Salazar, he explains in a separate post, used a taxpayer funded voucher program in Arizona to subsidize part of the cost of her education at a Catholic school that charged $14,000 per year. The rest had to come from her family’s income – hardly a solution that most low-income people can afford.”
https://ourfuture.org/20170119/does-betsy-devos-care-about-racial-equity-we-still-dont-know-2
Mitchell Robinson Salazar blog: http://www.eclectablog.com/2016/12/another-fake-news-voucher-story-from-the-great-lakes-education-project-and-betsy-devos.html
Her info is the first success story listed on Devos’s American Federation for Children website
http://www.federationforchildren.org/success-stories/
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Props – oooh you forgot the props the Dems invited to the speech – illegal immigrants – basically criminals. I would think that the voucher gave her the option that no federal program could – lots of money for her public school dumped in but the results still left her no choice but to have the vision to make her way”out” – making her and any other student in poverty driven neighborhood schools a plus in society – no longer a burden….
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jscheidell,
Public schools lift children out of poverty every day and perform miracles. Time to celebrate them.
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The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are NOT criminals. In fact, as a group, undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than other groups in the U.S. Read and learn. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/trump-illegal-immigrants-crime.html
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Omg, and what about ALL the successes in our public schools? This makes me sick. Wonder how much Robinson and Meriweather are getting paid?
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I think you meant Salazar and Meriweather, eh!
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I thought the Democrats stood for women, their successes etc – but here I see this group goes on a scavenger hunt – there has to be something wrong in the speech – to disparage a young lady who was given a chance to get out of her neighborhood school and became a success. You should be cheering for her and happy that she has a job – any job – productive in her own right. Oooh it was a voucher – so what – it offered her the motivation to improve – if she didn’t have it, maybe, just making a supposition here – if she was left in her hood and became “productive” in other ways which forced the rest of you to pay for her in food stamps and medical – I guess you would be happier? If you stand for kids and education, then at least give the kid praise – even though you have a distaste for vouchers. Hypocrisy
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jscheidell,
I think it is disgraceful the way the privatizers like Trump, DeVos, Eva Moskowitz, Eli Broad, etc. use children as political pawns.
If the research shows that vouchers actually hurt children, why parade one young woman who says she succeeded because she went to a religious school? The research at this point is close to definitive. Vouchers send kids to worse schools than their public schools.
Children should not be dressed up in matching T-shirts and paraded at legislative hearings to plead for more money for the charter corporation. That is disgraceful. Any public school principal who did that would be fired. And should be.
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I have no problem with giving this girl her due. She deserves credit for the hard work she put in to achieve her goals. She is a success story. The problem I have is that there is never a success story from the other side. Where are the success stories of the students who are educated in the “so-called failing school” I work in? I could give you hundreds of success stories. How about the students of mine who became doctors? Or the student I ran into last week who told me he just graduated from college and is running for city council? Or the student who is brilliant with computers and got his start by serving at a student help desk when we rolled out Chromebooks? Or the student who went on to be elected a county freeholder and then a mayor? I could give you dozens more and they all attended a “failing school.” How come these students are never highlighted? How come their accomplishments are not heralded at rallies and public addresses? Is it because it doesn’t fit the narrative? I’m just sick and tired of the all charter-all voucher cheerleading all the time. If can see beyond myself to acknowledge that this girl who benefited from a voucher program is indeed a success story, can’t you see beyond yourself to acknowledge that maybe we just aren’t getting the full story from the people lauding the “failing schools” rhetoric?
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It’s a lot easier to be a “success story” when you’re a ventriloquist’s dummy for the Overclass. When that’s the case, there’s no shortage of outlets for what they have to say through you.
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Our former governor, Mike Pence, absolutely loves vouchers.Under his “leadership” Indiana became a national leader in giving vouchers to students and families. In fact, we have the dubious reputation of being one of the fastest-growing voucher states. We have a ridiculous merit pay system where highly-effective teachers in the wealthy Carmel-Clay school system received a bonus check of $2422, whereas highly-effective teachers in the poorer school system of Wayne Township a few miles away received $42. Because of Pence and the Republican legislature, many schools in areas of high poverty are struggling financially. I retired from Muncie Community Schools where I was offered an early retirement incentive of staying on the teacher health insurance plan until I turned 65. Hundreds of other employees and I took the “bait” and were promptly dropped from the plan, leaving us without health insurance. Now because of the inequitable funding to schools (and because of a new local superintendent who doesn’t appear to like teachers much), the school board has made its final contract offer to teachers (as reported in our local newspaper, the Star Press):
• A 10 percent reduction in salary for teachers making between $36,005 and
$61,006 for 2015-16.
• A 28 percent cut, including a 20 percent reduction in salary retroactive to July 1,
2016 and the cancellation of two pay checks in the 2016-17 contract.
• Contributing a fixed total to insurance premiums, equal to about 68 percent to the
health insurance option
• Eliminating sick bank contributions
• Eliminating additional pay for teaching a sixth period
• Eliminating the $150 professional development stipend for teachers
• Eliminating retiree benefits
• A one-time salary raise to the minimum of $37,000 for any teacher currently
making less
Thank you, Vice-President Pence, for ruining the teaching profession in Muncie and in the entire state of Indiana.
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Mike Klonsky has a great commentary of DT’s eduction section of his speech
http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2017/03/trumps-empty-statements-on-education.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mikeklonsky+%28SmallTalk%29
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Someone commenting on a Washington Post story mentioned this. I looked her up and read her story on this website. This is a Devos and Campbell Brown backed organization. Anyway, read this and decide whether the new private school was solely responsible for her successful change or if other factors helped.
https://www.the74million.org/article/denisha-merriweather-in-her-own-words-the-private-school-scholarship-that-changed-my-life
Here’s an excerpt:
“At the end of the year, I received notification that I wouldn’t be promoted to middle school. That news wrecked my self-esteem. But the summer before my sixth-grade year, the trajectory of my life began to change. I began living permanently with my godmother. We moved into a Habitat for Humanity home. She enrolled me at Esprit de Corps Center for Learning, a small, private school on the Northside of Jacksonville, using a Step Up for Students tax credit scholarship.
“Now my life had something it hadn’t had before: stability. I had my own room at home, which provided me a place of solace. I didn’t have to change schools anymore. Living with my godmother didn’t separate me completely from my life on the Eastside. But she had a job at a Brooks Rehabilitation facility, made an honest wage, and set a good example for me.
“Before coming to live with my godmother, I’d play with friends in the neighborhood after school or watch television without doing my homework or preparing for the next day of school. My godmother enrolled me in an after-school program at the Police Athletic League on Jacksonville’s Northside. PAL provided me with structure after school. We had times for activities, homework, a snack, and dinner.”
So, was the new private school the sole source of her positive change? Couldn’t she have achieved these same results in a public school with similar supports?
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I would rather the focus be on the quality of her education rather than the fact she succeeded. Remember Trump Univ, as our majesty’s model of educational success.
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