Politico Education reports that Betsy DeVos will visit a Christian school today.
DEVOS TO VISIT PRIVATE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL IN D.C. THIS MORNING: The Trump administration’s campaign to promote D.C.’s voucher program continues this morning as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visits Cornerstone, a private school that says on its website it provides a “Christ-centered” education. President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted the program at an event with DeVos and Vice President Mike Pence. Trump said it makes an “extraordinary difference” to students in the nation’s capital, though a recent study found that it had a negative impact on children’s reading and math scores.
Valerie Strauss wrote about Trump’s remarks to a group of D.C. students, in which he told flat-out whoppers to them.
President Trump on Wednesday surprised a group of young D.C. students who were at the White House to meet the vice president and education secretary, and he touted the “winning” federally funded school voucher program in Washington. He failed to mention a new Education Department study that found that students in the program get lower standardized test scores than those in what he called “failing” public schools.
Trump called the event, scheduled during National Charter Schools Week, “beautiful” and “very exciting.” Students from public and private schools and family members were there to meet Vice President Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Both DeVos and Trump have criticized traditional public schools while praising alternatives, including charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, and voucher/voucher-like programs that allow public money to be used for private and religious school. Their support for the latter is in contrast with the Obama administration, which backed charters but not vouchers.
Trump’s schedule did not include a stop in the Roosevelt Room, where the event was being held, but he joked that when he heard DeVos was there, he thought he would come to interrupt her, and “maybe I’ll be allowed to say a few words.”
In his remarks, he took the opportunity to slam D.C. public schools while talking up the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the only federally funded school voucher program in the country. He said to the kids, according to a White House transcript:
So yesterday I said that our spending bill was a win for the American people, which is exactly what it was — an amazing day. And this is what winning for young children and kids from all over the country looks like. The Opportunity Scholarship program that we’re funding allows families in the inner city of our nation’s capital to leave failing public schools and attend a private school, making an extraordinary difference in these incredible young lives. You’re so lucky. Great. You’re happy about it? Huh? That’s great.
The results speak for themselves. Ninety-eight percent of scholarship recipients represent their high school diplomas, and they’re really very, very special. They go into tremendous successes. So I think you’re going to all be very, very successful. You have a big start, right? Great start.
No study has ever found a 98% graduation rate from voucher schools. The latest study showed students in D.C. voucher schools losing ground.
Boasting comes naturally to him, it seems, even to little children. They didn’t have to hear any negative remarks, but they didn’t need to hear flat-out lies.
I would be interested to see how effective this school is in promoting social mobility. How many future first generation college students does it help?
Or is it mostly serving students from families who already have college degrees?
WWJD?
Will DeVoodoo say, “And now let us pray?”
I believe it is spelled “prey” in this case.
“The Reformation”
Reform is a religion
With Friedman as it’s god
And Betsy D as profit
To follow and to laud
With charter as the chapel
Where people bow and prey
With hymnal books from Apple
To Rapture them away
The fundamental tenet
The key to Heaven’s Gates
Is righteousness of market
That’s sealing all our fates
SomeDAM Poet .
You are amazing.
I actually wrote that some time ago, but the lovely thing about reform and reformers is that they never change, no matter what. They are like an old wine that long ago turned to vinegar.
Of course, I never could have guessed how apt the reform as religion metaphor would become with Betsy D.
And Bill Gates was the original profit, in case you were wondering.
“hymnal books form Apple” -Today there was a tv program segment about the damage caused to kids from screen usage. It was followed by a Microsoft advertisement for screen usage by students learning to read.
The conservative love and devotion to Ayn Rand baffles me as her beliefs did not include God. In practice her belief system is selfish and cruel and how evangelicals square that with Christianity is beyond me.
“The unfettered free market, so revered in British policy that a million Irish were allowed to die of starvation.” Tim Egan
“The Preying Mantis”
The mantis preys on schools
Of non-religious kind
And unsuspecting fools
Are caught in mantis bind
The mantis moves with speed
Uncommon for its size
With end, of course, to feed
And commons privatize
I think Trump doesn’t know he is lying. To Agent Orange, his lies are his truth, part of his psychopathic malignant narcissism. He thinks that the lies coming comes out of his mouth or through his tweeting fingers is the truth because they come from him.
As is said about Bloomberg, he thinks himself a self-made man and he worships his creator.
Please read George Will’s column in wash post…
Cali girl,
Lawrence McDonnell interviewed Will on MSNBC.
Everyone is entitled to worship as they please. However, in a secular nation with no national religion, no public tax dollars should be spent on religious education. It makes even less sense when the dismal results are worse than the public schools. Religion groups enjoy tax free status. If they value having poor students attend their schools, they should set up their own scholarships with the money they don’t spend on taxes.
You are mistaken. A person can go to a seminary, and be trained as a minister. The Supreme Court ruled it so unanimously. see
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1985/84-1070
That case has very narrow applicability because the funds were going to a program for the visually impaired, something Plaintiff was entitled to as a result of his visual disability.
In any case, there is a standing distinction between government funds being used as financial aid for an institution of higher learning (in which no universal public option is available) vs. K-12 education (in which there is a universal public option).
What is the distinction between government funds going to an institution of higher learning (like a university of a vocational school), and government funds going to an institution of K-12 education?
Public universities are established with public funds, and private universities are established with private funds. Students may receive financial aid to attend either.
The difference between K-12 and university (as I’ve already stated) is that there is a universal free public option available for the former but not the latter. If we had universal free public universities then we wouldn’t need federal financial aid for those who choose private options.
If someone is an atheist, should they be forced to spend their public tax dollars religious education? These blurred lines put us on a slippery slope. We see this with privatization. We go from charters, to vouchers to paying for almost anything that announces itself as “education.”
Yes they should. The Supreme Court has ruled it so, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002). As long as the program is part of an overall school choice plan. This has been settled for over 15 years.
The US Military has chaplains, paid for by public tax dollars, including contributions by atheists.
Public tax dollars are provided to religious establishments to set up homeless shelters, and shelters for battered women.
The public purse pays for all types of services, provided by religious organizations, including education.
Chaplains serve within the military. With vouchers money is lost from the majority of students and sent to a separate, private entity. It is an entirely different scenario. Money is not deducted from the military budget to pay for a separate religious military that reduces the capacity of the military to do their job. This is the impact of vouchers.
The right wing specializes in false equivalencies like Charles’ input.
The richest 0.1% anticipate that the public will ultimately refuse to pay taxes for the plurality of unaccountable religious schools. Gates has, in the wings, a for-profit system to replace public education. It’s one more way that the rich can avoid taxes and make money off of the middle class and poor. The World Bank already promotes for-profits to the exclusion of public education.
One of the stronger arguments to pass school levies is the effect schools have on property values. When schools are untethered from communities, that argument evaporates.
Of course she will. It’s where she is most comfortable.
Is Randi Weingarten going with her?
That’s a good one!
Is the next stop a yeshiva?
Or, a Wiccan school?
Good one Linda!
There is an excellent Madras (Islamic school), here in Herndon VA. The King Abdullah academy. See
http://www.kaa-herndon.com/
As part of our splendid tradition of religious freedom, I think it would be most appropriate for the SecEd to visit an excellent Islamic school.
Scheming to get tax money for religious schools is nothing more than a ploy to eliminate public tax support for the education of the middle class and poor. It paves the way for the richest 0.1%’s unrelenting greed, manifested in their demand to make money off of other people’s kids and to avoid paying taxes.
The argument used to pass levies, higher property values, evaporates when schools aren’t tethered to local communities, which I speculate the conscience-lacking Charles and the masters he serves, know. Rhetorically, isn’t that why Gates, Zuckerberg, Pearson,… invested in for-profit schools-in-a-box and why the World Bank promotes them to the exclusion of public education?