Will Betsy DeVos have a better understanding of public schools after visiting one? Or is she measuring it as a potential charter school?
DeVos, Weingarten lay down arms for first-ever joint school visit
DeVos, Weingarten lay down arms for first-ever joint school visit By Caitlin Emma
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and American Federation of Teachers Presidents Randi Weingarten — longtime combatants in the nation’s school wars — will converge Thursday on a small Ohio school district deep in Trump country where amid forced pleasantries, they’ll seek to score political points.
It’s a schoolyard stare-down of sortsfor the two veterans, who are making a first-ever joint visit to several public schools in Van Wert, a rural community in northwest Ohio that went overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump.
Weingarten extended the invitation to DeVos in February with little expectation the secretary would accept after the teachers unions’ concerted efforts to sink her nomination. DeVos called her bluff, perhaps because she is under pressure to show her commitment to public schools and appearing in a midwestern Republican stronghold plays to her strengths.
The condition was that Weingarten must visit a still unidentified school of “choice” with DeVos. That visit hasn’t been scheduled yet.
“These women are mortal political enemies, bent on destroying the other’s education agenda through deployment of vast financial resources,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center.
“But it’s necessary for Weingarten to find favor with the Education Department,” he said. “And it can only help DeVos if she’s seen as the secretary for all schools and not just charters and private schools.”
In fact, the joint tour allows both women to press points that are critically important to them, said several policy watchers. DeVos can show rural Republicans and Democrats that she supports all schools, not just charter and private schools. Weingarten — who once stood next to a protester costumed as a grizzly bear to mock DeVos remarks about the need for guns in schools — can show she is extending an olive branch to the secretary even as she champions public education.
Thomas Toch, an education policy expert at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and founder of the think tank FutureEd, suggested that few people in the public education sector “are still listening to DeVos and one might argue this is an attempt to address that problem.”
“Until now, she has been reluctant to say anything other than, ‘I’m for good public schools, good charter schools, good private schools.’ She repeats that frame over and over and hasn’t been willing to go beyond that. … She’s going to have to go much farther than she has to date in terms of embracing public education.”
From Weingarten’s perspective, if DeVos makes a strong commitment to public education standing next to the union leader, she might be able to say she helped DeVos soften her stance, Toch said.
Weingarten said in an interview that she hopes the trip will give DeVos a chance to learn what is working in public schools, and not just a photo opportunity. She said she also wants her to understand how Trump’s budget blueprint, which would slash the Education Department’s $68 billion budget by 13.5 percent, would hurt public schools.
“This is an area that voted for Trump, but they love their public schools and they’re really upset about the cuts to education and this polarization about public schooling,” Weingarten said. “They’re wary about [DeVos’] policies and they should be wary about her policies. They’re an attempt to dismantle, defund and destabilize public schools.”
A spokesman for the Education Department declined POLITICO’s request for an interview with DeVos. But in a written statement shared with The Blade in Toledo, DeVos said that “every parent should be able to send their children to a school that meets their unique needs, and for many parents, that is a public school. I support and celebrate all great schools.”
Kaleigh Lemaster, executive director for School Choice Ohio, a statewide choice advocacy group, said she hoped the focus of the trip would be on children, rather than a particular education option.
“We’re happy to see Secretary DeVos and Randi Weingarten visiting great public schools, charter schools and private schools because we believe that every family should be able to choose the best educational environment for their children,” Lemaster said. “This is a great opportunity for them to talk about Ohio’s schools and hopefully find agreement on what should be at the center of all discussions on education policy — the children.”
Van Wert Superintendent Ken Amstutz said he’s eager to have his school district “pull these two people together,” although he noted the Education Department has largely been in the driver’s seat when it comes to planning the visit.
DeVos and Weingarten are expected to spend the day visiting Van Wert’s high school, elementary school and early childhood center, where they’ll hear from administrators, teachers and students. They’ll hear about programs that provide students with social services and food on the weekends when they otherwise might go hungry. And they’re expected to visit with fifth graders and a high school robotics class.
Amstutz said his district has struggled financially, but he’s eager to show how teachers and students are doing innovative things with limited resources — for instance, offering a high school robotics club, which won a regional contest earlier this year.
“A lot of good things are happening in public education. I think the blinders are on and I’d just like to have her open her eyes and take a look at what’s going on,” he said of DeVos. “Maybe Van Wert will be the starting point of where this conversation takes place between Betsy DeVos and proponents of public education.”
As for the people of Van Wert, Republican Party Chairman Thad Lichtensteiger, a farmer, said he believes his neighbors will give DeVos “a fair shake.”
“Van Wert is a really conservative place,” he said. “We’re going to weigh the issues on their own merits, rather than say Trump is evil and paint anybody associated with him with that broad brush.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“These women are mortal political enemies, bent on destroying the other’s education agenda…..”
Meh. Not really. They’re both choice advocates, it’s just a matter of which choice – charters or vouchers. DeVos has no use for unions; Weingartner likes unions as long as she’s in the driver’s seat and the union does her bidding (which is the bidding of her corporate masters). Otherwise, they could share a lovely cup of tea together and have a fine time. They remind me of the old Looney Tunes cartoons with the coyote and the sheepdog. They’d spend the day bashing the heck out of each other, but after they clocked out, they were best friends. The difference is that, at least as long as he was on the clock, the sheepdog really did protect the sheep.
Always good to see the union heads sell out the teachers. NOT
See why you should have insisted the U.S. Dept be abolished ?
Lost cause! Just more hype.
http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/04/18/fordham-university-tuition-45000-professors-medicaid/
Not college and career ready.
On a more serious note . Progress requires willingness to sacrifice.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/20069/how_barnard_contingent_faculty_won_their_first_contract
“The Weingarten”
The wine is very nice
In garden with some ice
And rubbing elbows too,
With Bets, she likes to do
There’s always a slim chance a missionary will “go native”, as they say, but my guess is she’ll just keep trying to convert the pagans to her Amway Brand Of Moneytheism©®$™
Quite interesting! Thanks for sharing, Joel.
Death. Taxes. Randi Weingarten constantly working to narrow the amount of daylight between her and whomever is in power.
Reformers, privatizers and Randi Weingarten are the enemies of working teachers and public education.
Organized teachers can’t even get rid of Weingarten, and we think we have hope against the reform movement? I will have exactly no hope so long as Weingarten has any position having anything to do with education.
A disgusting pseudo-leader who has done exactly nothing for working teachers or public education aside from blurring the lines and making things easier for those who seek to privatize public school and destroy organized teachers.
“Fake Union Leaders”
Randi is to leader
As Infowars to news
Principle of Peter
Gobbles up the dues
Amen NYST!
+1,000
As an illustrative case in point, Weingarten’s flunky and the Chancellor’s UFT lapdog in NYC, Michael Mulgrew, refuses to provide anything but the most perfunctory (non-support) support for the teachers and parents at the renowned Central Park East School, who are fighting a toxic Principal who has literally stated that she has no obligation to anyone but her superiors at the DOE, and is trying to destroy the career of the school’s union rep, among other teachers.
A real union, as a matter of policy, would go ballistic if management showed a pattern of targeting shop stewards, but teachers in NYC don’t have a union, but rather a dues-swallowing, spin-emitting arm of the DOE’s HR department.
As for Weingarten and De Vos’ little photo op and future collaboration (something Weingarten specializes in), I hope they’re very happy together.
“…dues-swallowing , spin emitting arm of DOE..” -couldn’t paint a clearer picture.
“And it can only help DeVos if she’s seen as the secretary for all schools and not just charters and private schools.”
I guess a photo op with some public school students could do it.
I hope not, though. I hope people in Ohio insist she actually do something to benefit any public school anywhere before buying the currently fashionable “agnostic” claim.
I’ll look and see if ed reformers at the federal and state level have cut funding to Van Wert public schools. Chances are the answer is “yes” since most Ohio public schools have lost under ed reform schemes and that one is probably no different.
What does “support” mean in ed reform circles? Allow to exist? Don’t deliberately and specifically harm?
It seems like we could demand more than that from public employees.
You’re right. Photos ops are staged to give the appearance of “hands across the aisle.” What matters is what they actually do. We know what DeVos stands for, and no photo op will change her agenda, and Weingarten loves a dog and pony show.
We also know what Randi Weingarten stands for: Randi Weingarten, and maintaining her proximity to power, like a moth to a flame.
DeVos said that “every parent should be able to send their children to a school that meets their unique needs, and for many parents, that is a public school. I support and celebrate all great schools.”
There’s a basic misunderstanding of geography here, not to mention “systems” and “funding”
If “every parent” sends their children to the school of their choice in Van Wert the schools as they are now would cease to exist, not to mention they’d be spending half their funding on transportation.
I’m genuinely baffled at how DeVos refuses to admit these things. This slogan she’s settled on is a fantasy. I get why it’s politically popular- everyone gets everything they want with no downside and no additional cost, but it isn’t true.
“A lot of good things are happening in public education. I think the blinders are on and I’d just like to have her open her eyes and take a look at what’s going on,” he said of DeVos. “Maybe Van Wert will be the starting point of where this conversation takes place between Betsy DeVos and proponents of public education.”
Boy, you certainly won’t hear THAT in ed reform.
I’m glad they get to show off the work they’re proud of but it’s pretty damn ridiculous they have to beg the US Secretary of Education to support a public school.
What a ridiculous situation. Will she let us know if she’s changed her mind and decided to support kids in public schools? Will they pass the test?
Maybe she needs a gentle reminder that these people pay her and fund her department.
I’m not sure where she got the idea that we work for her, but we don’t.
Here’s a better piece from the Toledo Blade. Van Wert is in NW Ohio and The Blade is the major newspaper in that area:
“Diverting money “to the point where it hurts public schools” doesn’t help places like this, Mr. Hood said.
“The people who put Donald Trump in office live in Van Wert County, and they live in all the other ‘Van Werts,’” Mr. Hood said. “Charter schools and private schools and vouchers are not going to mean much to people in Van Wert.”
That’s true and in an odd way I think it has benefited privatizers. People in rural areas believe most of ed reform simply doesn’t apply to them, because most of ed reform is vouchers and charters. They don’t see it as a threat- it’s simply irrelevant to their schools. They paid attention to Common Core because it was one of the very few ed reform initiatives that had anything to do with existing public schools. THEN you saw pushback.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2017/04/19/Education-Secretary-DeVos-union-chief-to-visit-Van-Wert.html
“People in rural areas believe most of ed reform simply doesn’t apply to them, because most of ed reform is vouchers and charters. They don’t see it as a threat- it’s simply irrelevant to their schools.”
Exactly!
Having lived now for 12 years in a very rural area I can vouch that most don’t believe the school deforms have anything to do with the local public schools. If the edudeformers get their way my fellow rural residents will be shocked at what happens to their beloved, and the community public schools are generally very much loved, community public schools.
The AFT is one of two partners at UnKochMyCampus.org. So, if the AFT is working for college faculty who are members of AFT, why doesn’t the UnKoch website have an expanded focus, exposing the Gates Foundation’s incursions into higher ed? In Jan., when Gates introduced Frontier Set “to create new institutional delivery methods”, did the AFT ask the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. to cover the info. and the publications chose to ignore the vitally important subject or, has AFT never informed the media? And if, it’s the latter, new unions need to be formed to represent teachers.
When the 2010-2014 Massachusetts teachers association (13,000 members) had as president, a man who currently describes himself as a Fellow of the Gates-funded Pahara, in a bio. for the Massachusetts Department of Higher Ed., it is very problematic.
Weingarten made Gates the keynote speaker at the 2010 AFT convention, and had her apparatchiks boo and drown out teachers who protested the validation given to one of chief tormenters. Prior to that, she brageed about her collaboration with Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein, who were busy trying to blow up the public schools in NYC.
She’s a fraud from A to Z.
Yesterday, Weingarten wasted teacher clout supporting the tech industry agenda of immigration (Huffpo) Tech billionaires have sufficient money and power to get what they want on immigration. Weingarten is with less than being worthless to squander teacher resources, which should be focused like a laser on democracy.
With all the people that members of AFT could choose for union head, why do teachers keep voting for Weingarten?
I can see why they voted for her the first time, thinking that her background at Cornell ILR and in law school might help teachers negotiate deals with management, but after all the things she has done over the past decade which have effectively undermined teachers in favor of “management” — supporting Common Core, testing and VAM (initially, at least) — I really can’t see why people keep voting for her.
Has the AFT publicly voiced objection to Rubio’s and, the Center for American Progress’ legislation/plan to eviscerate faculty involvement in college accreditation, in favor of student outcome measurement? Why in the h_ll, would Randi use the Huffpo forum to talk about immigration and ignore the opportunity to use the media to build support for AFT college professors, whose jobs are in imminent danger?
What is wrong with Randi that she ignores the threats to American democracy, that are all around her?
This simply seems like another photo opportunity for DeVOS to look like she is working hard and not bias towards Charter schools and voucher systems by visiting a public school. While this should be an experience for her as the Secretary of Education, it’s difficult for me to understand others’ beliefs that this “working experience” she is doing justifies her complete lack of even stepping foot in a public school and about the education system in the United States. The U.S. education system is far from perfect. That being said, having someone in the position to lead the department with any slightly more experience than DeVOS qualifies a sixth grader to take her place.
BATS should certify as a union or teachers should seek to replace Weingarten’s AFT with
a union like the Teamsters.
I’m not an expert in anything but if someone wants to read a (long winded) review detailing how I believe this is going to play out here it goes.
First, one can simply not ignore the fact that Ohio is the motherland of Whole Language and the Reading Recovery/Leveled Literacy Intervention tutoring methods. Keep in mind that these are moneymakers for The Ohio State University and a few years back RR got yet another federal grant to be re-promoted.
If a person knows anything at all about dyslexia or reading struggle then that person will have already found out that plenty of research shows whole language based reading approaches simply do not work for a significant number of struggling readers (aka dyslexic students) who make up an estimated 20% of the general population according to the International Dyslexia Association.
These students (and there are at least 5 per class based on that statistic) need an individualized systematic phonics approach in order to be able to decode (read).
That is not an approach taught in Ohio state universities currently. In fact, I don’t believe state universities are even required to teach anything about dyslexia in Ohio at this point (although many parents and organizations are trying to get this changed). There are a whole lot of students who are not reading and/or not reading well in Ohio.
I’ll attach a link from the website of the foremost learning disabilities law firm in the U.S. if anyone wants to look into this further. Also I recommend the book The Good School by Peg Tyre – it explains reading very well. http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/read.rr.ltr.experts.htm
So if I were a greed addicted, opportunistic businessperson, or even a think tank employee who thought of public school as the enemy and wanted to dismantle it, what would I decide that the weakness I could exploit was: reading.
So what are all these ridiculous standardized tests based on: reading ability. And math, because if you can’t read you can’t very well pass math (story problems) or even science now can you?
Also if you make the tests harder than they need to be then there you have it (Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee exam comes to mind- it’s written at a 4th grade level if memory serves).
As many struggling readers actually have math and science strengths it’s too bad they are going to be at a significant disadvantage (and probably end up hating school because they felt like failures in the reading department).
But I digress – so why did the above mentioned educational privatizes really end up in Van Wert- isn’t that the question here?
Besides the fact that Van Wert, Ohio is one of the places where they weren’t going to get booed off the stage (a good sign for us public school folk) they went because even in rural Ohio as we speak charter owners and wanna-be owners are rubbing their palms together in anticipation of the upcoming opportunity to make money off rural students (due to their “failing school” status and the subsequent handover to charters).
They went as a good will mission to show all those Van Wert supporters they were not forgotten and shouldn’t be mad when change comes down the pike and the few people with school jobs that pay well and have benefits are going to need to get with the program.
The rural areas may not know they are sitting ducks for being taken over by privatization but they are. They are part of the set up also.
To my mind (and I have no real proof of this yet but I’m expecting to soon) anywhere you see a brand new school building being built I’m betting it’s going to be declared “a failing public school” and given over to a charter owner within the next 5-10 years.
All those schools that had been in old buildings for so many years are suddenly so important? Why the sudden new school building craze? It’s worst in Columbus. No one ever saw a district get so many new buildings so quickly.
Well, let me explain what I was told by someone with more knowledge than most:
When the charters first came to Ohio in the late 1990’s many of them opened but those first 2 years they were given about 2K more for the first 2 years to cover building costs but after the first 2 years the extra money dropped off. Many of them closed. They simply couldn’t run without the extra money. The building costs were too prohibitive.
The charter schools that remained open were the ones where the building was not really an issue in the first place (for example the owners already owned the property).
So after learning that the privatizes had to have the buildings in order to thrive, the plan was revised. Now it’s: let’s build new buildings on the taxpayer dime and then turn them into charters after a few years.
So I’m going to finish as I’ve said too much already. Hopefully I’m wrong but this is how I see it.
As I’ve said before I believe in the Tytler Cycle of democracy which essentially means Jimmy Carter was the last president who gave a rat’s toenail about We The People. Unless we have election reform (so elections are not based on campaign funding) I fully expect we will all see the day the only children served by public school will be those the charter school owners don’t want.
Tell me I’m wrong, I’d like to be convinced of that.
Michelle,
You are right!
Michelle–agree with so much you’ve written. Reading Recovery was an abject failure in my former school district–the sad result being that it kept children from getting the real help they needed–that is, evaluation for special education services. Most of those in R.R. turned out to have a learning disability, not diagnosed–due to time spent in R.R. (& doing SO well! {sarcasm})–until at least 4th Grade, if not later. Whole Language was the cruelest of jokes; many of my former colleagues & I would bet that kids who had been diagnosed w/reading disabilities were actually misdiagnosed–they couldn’t read phonetically because they’d never been taught phonics, so it was catching up in the intermediate grades & even beyond (I would liken this to all of the nonsense–NCLB, RTTP, “standardized” testing, test-prepping & overuse of computers that Bill Gates
has been touting as “let’s see what happens in 10 years,”–not only wasting valuable education time, but actually ruining our kids’ lives in so many ways.)
Also–I wouldn’t bet against your theory about new buildings & charter school move-ins.
Here, in ILL-Annoy, bill(s) (they change the chambers & #s for more public confusion!)
have been introduced so that property taxes would be equalized–money taken from the rich(er) districts & reallocated to the poorer. Who’s pushing that? Why, a group that is pro-charter, giving presentations w/the bells-&-whistles power point that illustrates to the audience just who much more of the pie those poorer districts will receive.
And, yeah, then that money will be given over…to charter schools. And–just as in Chicago–the money will be drained out of the existing public schools, starving them & creating their forced failure.