Each day brings more evidence that the Trump administration intends to roll back the social and political gains of the past 50 years (Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society) and perhaps even FDR’s New Deal.
Betsy DeVos hired lawyer and rightwing activist Candace Jackson as acting assistant secretary in charge of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. When DeVos finds a permanent assistant secretary, Jackson will become deputy to that person. All of this maneuvering enables Jackson to avoid Senate confirmation, where even some Republicans might be uncomfortable with her record.
Stephen Singer writes here about Jackson’s opposition to affirmative action and feminism.
Steven Singer says that Jackson’s appointment signals DeVos’s strident belief in the free market. Part of her project is to negate the regulations that protect the civil rights of students. Let the free market sort things out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
DeVos is still promoting this ed reform fairy tale:
“School choice is pro-parent and pro-student. It isn’t anti-public school. Many students attend great public schools, and even if given the choice to send their kids elsewhere, many parents will choose to keep their child in a public school. If the school is meeting their needs, they should. School choice isn’t about elevating one type of school over another – it’s about trusting parents to choose the best fit for their child.”
Everyone gets everything they want with no risk, no tradeoffs, and no additional cost!
No wonder this is so popular with politicians. It’s a fantasy.
She promises…everything to…everybody!
It’s also absolutely untrue in ed reform circles. I challenge any of you to read anything that comes out of the “reform movement”- it is OVERWHELMINGLY negative towards public schools, if public schools are mentioned at all- often they’re simply omitted.
Look at how your state legislature spends their time. Ohio devotes entire sessions to charters and vouchers- 90% of the kids in this state attend public schools but you would never know it looking at what comes out of Columbus.
The same is true of the US Congress. Charter funding is the top priority. They ALWAYS manage to get that done. Public schools are an after-thought in DC, the “status quo” schools they consider “default” back-ups to their preferred choice schools.
If these folks were ACTUALLY “agnostics” we would see the same time, energy and passion they all devote to charters and vouchers devoted to public schools. We don’t because they aren’t. This is clear in the Trump budget! Public schools are the big losers. They are CHOOSING to weaken public schools and promote charters and vouchers. This is a deliberate policy.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/04/i_support_all_schools_that_put.html
Mr. Singer….what can you tell us about Alisha Kramer, the bright young lady who has been dating jon Ossoff for 12 years. You can start with an article from the Gates foundation.Impatient Optimists.
???
Some democrats are jumping up and down, demanding cheers for a big victory for jon Ossoff……who passes their requirements……keep your mouth shut when it comes to education—democrats get massive support from teachers so mum is the word. He has been dating a woman, a very fine, intelligent woman, who is sponsored by the Gates foundation, and the main commentary about ossoff is the amount of outside money given to him…..some maximum contributions from the caliber charter people.
I asked for help finding our where he stands on education issues….Diane admitted she knew nothing.
I think the wealthy foundations know a bargain when they see one…..correct me if you can find contrary information about him.
or just blast the krap out of me for being stupid:
“Oh, shut up Joe. Be pragmatic. don’t ask for trouble…..he is a democrat!”
Don’t know enough about him to say much of anything other than being 30 years old seems like less than a tenderfoot when it comes to life experience.
Which means he probably can be swayed to do others bidding, which may or may not be a good thing.
I think I was over the line extreme in claiming stuff I was not sure of. I had been talking about him on Rush Limbaugh, (they say they are going to call me to expand my explanations)….it is definitely true that he received a maximum donation from a woman associated with Caliber charters…..and Impatient Optimists is a Gates foundation thing, and they praised his girlfriend …..it is not exactly a sin…..According to her author bio at Impatient Optimists, Alisha Kramer has extensive research experience in global health and public policy. She worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2012 to 2014. Kramer was a program coordinator and research assistant for the CSIS Global Health Policy Center in Washington D.C., and worked on global health issues, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, women’s health, and U.S. multilateral engagement. In addition to this, she organized research trips to Botswana, Switzerland, and Ethiopia, and co-led congressional staff delegations to South Africa and Zambia.
Jon Ossoff’s girlfriend has co-authored CSIS publications on HIV/AIDS and U.S. PEPFAR programs, U.S. engagement with global health multilateral institutions, and women’s reproductive health. Previously, Kramer worked as a research assistant in an immunology laboratory at Georgetown University, where she studied the host immune response to Giardia lamblia infection in in vitro and in vivo models.
In 2011, Kramer contributed to the College Women’s Ultimate Resources Manual, with an essay called “Why Play Ultimate?” She was the captain of the Georgetown ultimate frisbee team, Huckin’ Foyas. https://www.earnthenecklace.com/alisha-kramer-jon-ossoffs-girlfriend-wiki-age-instagram-pics/
as always…..charter people stingy with info.
The US Secretary of Education has to put an editorial in an Ohio newspaper telling people she “supports” the public schools that 90% of kids in the state attend.
Ed reform might want to look at how their “movement” landed them here, because that is ludicrous.
They’re perceived as anti-public school because they ARE anti-public school. Ed reformers in Ohio haven’t done a single thing to benefit any public school in the state. Their ENTIRE focus is bashing public schools to promote charters and vouchers.
Half of Ohio districts have lost funding since 2010. How do ed reformers respond to that? They launch a lobbying campaign to increase funding for charters.
They seem to recognize they are anti-public school on some level because they launch political campaigns to deny it. They seem to have belatedly recognized that they offer absolutely nothing of value to 90% of students and parents.
“For example, why isn’t there more focus on how technology can transform education in the same way it has positively changed so many other aspects of our lives? Today, it’s possible for every student to learn at their own pace, with responsive technologies advancing them through topics they’ve already mastered and delving deeper into areas where they’re struggling.”
Also- is anyone in ed reform embarrassed at how they’re so blatantly selling tech product?
For goodness sakes. Is DeVos on an actual ed tech payroll? I get that the unfashionable public sector schools are a much bigger market than charters and private schools but surely our schools are more than buyers of what these people are selling.
great wprk Chiara….sorry for what must look like an irrelevant interruption…..I was on Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and he wants me on again tomorrow….I was able to say DeVos is a mess, and it is very obvious, but democrats need to face the huge mistake Obama made with Gates and Duncan.
Chiara. You know, of course, that DeVos just echoed the attempt by state legislators to install competency-based education as the state norm, with tech “on” all of the time under the banner of “personalized learning” which actuall means depersonalized learning, delegating instruction to never seen designers curriculum. That effort is being marketed as “getting rid of the Common Core.” Betsy DeVos is marketing tech, and so are elected officials, and so are co-opted superintendents and school boards who seem to think artificial intelligence is always superior to that of human teachers.
I would really urge school boards and public schools to ignore the advice of the US Department of Education directing them to spend a bundle on tech and instead visit the public schools that invested in this stuff.
This is hype and marketing. You’re the buyer and it’s public funds you’re spending. Beware of the ed reform salesforce who are selling this. This is NOT a no-risk investment. If “personalized learning” ends up as cheap garbage online courses local people won’t hold Betsy DeVos responsible for that decision- they will hold school boards and schools responsible. You will regret being shamed into climbing on this bandwagon. They have no evidence that any of this adds value equivalent to the investment.
Yes, and the biggie not yet fully part of school IT policies is the fact that Trump and Republicans have rolled back the privacy rules that once were in place for internet service providers. Privacy of INDIVIDUAL student information is up to the ISP provider and you can bet any published privacy policies are in the interest of the ISP’s bottom line–“collecting it to enhance the user experience” then selling it to the highest bidder.
On April 3, 2017 Trump signed into law Senate Joint Resolution 34 (S. J. Res. 34), a measure that allows Internet service providers such as AT&T/Direct TV, Century Link, Comcast/Xfinity, Cox Communications, Frontier, Time Warner/Spectrum, Verizon and hundreds of others to operate without privacy rules.
S. J. Res. 34 killed the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) privacy rules set forth during the Obama Administration in Public Law No: 115-22: “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services.” Moreover, the FCC rule that Trump and supporters killed was signed under the Congressional Review Act, which means that the FCC cannot restore those dead-in-the-water privacy rules in the future.
Children are data, and data is for sale.
Candace Jackson leaves me with the impression that she is, in the final analysis, a professional whiner.
A victim mentality is never appealing.
This is off topic but relates to how far supporters of tRump will go in expressing their support. Charles Manson? Yep, he’s okay to visit the WH.
…………
Lie Witness News – Donald Trump Visitor Log Edition
Jimmy Kimmel Live
Published on Apr 19, 2017
The Trump administration has decided that unlike the Obama administration, they will not be releasing the White House visitor logs of who comes in and out to see the president. So we went onto the street and asked people who identified as pro-Trump about a list of individuals we said visited the White House. None of them are actually on the visitor log but that didn’t stop people from giving their thoughts in a White House guest edition of #LieWitnessNews.
Just when you think it can’t get worse. And doing what she did to get around a senate hearing is beyond belief. Corrupt POS comes to mind.
It’s the modus operandi of the xtian religious right to do anything anyway to get their god’s version of the world into the “hearts and minds” of the citizens of this country so that it may once again be “great again” (sic).
For the life of me, I cannot find where the free market is mentioned in the Bible, and as far as I know, Jesus was never big on “the survival of the fittest.”
I “flew” to the free market on google earth. Here is where it took me: 13, 33 14.99 North and 29 29 42.44 West. Pretty hard to drive there.