Lina Lyons is president-elect of the Arizona School Boards Association.
She writes here about the spurious claim that school choice is the answer to all problems.
She says that the nevitable result of school choice will not be better education, but segregation by race, class, ethnicity, and socioeconomic.
Yet DeVos continues to evade any federal responsibility for promoting desegregation and evades any federal responsibility for discouraging discrimination.
She writes:
“Some parents don’t know best. There. I said it. Let’s face it, some parents aren’t present, some are abusive, and some are drug addicts. Then there are those who are trying their damnedest to provide for their children but their minimum wage jobs (without benefits) just don’t pay enough to make ends meet. Bottom line is, not all parents know how, or care enough to provide, the best they can for their children. Where that is the case, or, when hard working parents need a little help, it is up to all of us in a civil society, to ensure all children are safe and that their basic needs are met. As education reformer John Dewey said over a century ago, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”
“Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos evidently doesn’t agree. In recent testimony to Congress, no matter what question she was asked about how far states would be allowed to go in discriminating against certain types of students, she kept deflecting to “states rights” and “parental rights,” failing to say at any point in the testimony that she would ensure states receiving federal dollars would not discriminate. From watching her testimony, if she had been the Secretary of Education with Donald Trump as President back in the early 1960s, the Alabama National Guard would undoubtedly never have been called up to integrate the schools.
“This should surprise no one. After all, the entire school reform agenda is really about promoting survival of the fittest. Those who “have” and already do well, will be set up for even more success while those dealing with the challenges poverty presents, will continue to suffer. As far as Betsy DeVos is concerned, the U.S. Department of Education has no responsibility to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender identity. The hell with Brown vs. Board of Education, she will not step in to ensure states do the right thing for their students. As Jack Covey wrote recently to Diane Ravitch, to Betsy, “choice” is everything and parents should be able to send their children to a black-free, LGBT-free, or Muslim-free school on the taxpayer’s dime if they want to.
“Does that EVEN sound remotely like America to you? How can it be okay for our tax dollars to promote blatant discrimination? This is essentially state-sponsored discrimination. Yes, discrimination has always occurred via self-funded choice. The wealthy have always been able to keep their children away from the rest of us but, it was on their own dime. As it has always been with parents who stretched budgets to live in neighborhoods with the “best” school district as a way to ensure their child had the best chance.”
There were many reasons to oppose Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Add another: she has no intention of using federal dollars to enforce the laws barring discrimination.
How can DeVoodoo sleep at night?
Comfortably, on the finest ergonomic, pillow-topped mattress and the best Egyptian satin sheets money can buy.
Are you sure?
I heard the Secretary’s voucher campaign swing last week. She tells two stories about public school students. Both of them involve students who failed. IN CONTRAST (in case you missed the blatant propaganda she’s pushing) the two PRIVATE school students she features are huge successes!
We all paid tens of federal employees to conduct this anti-public school campaign swing.
Overtly working AGAINST our childrens’ schools and doing it on our dime.
Yes after a significant amount of reading I now agree that racism is a large motivation for the voucher push.
Here’s DeVos on US public schools:
While today’s hearing is meant to focus on the numbers and mechanics of the budget, I hope we’ll all remember our goal and our purpose: how to best serve America’s students.
“Allow me to share just one example:
I recently met a young man—Michael—whose story truly spoke to me. Michael grew up in East Hartford, Connecticut, in a low-income neighborhood. He was an average student throughout elementary and middle school, but that all changed when he reached the district high school.
Michael described a school where students were the real ones in charge of the class, and they would make it impossible for the teacher to teach.
He was constantly bullied, to the point he was afraid to even go to the school’s bathroom, and this constant fear made him hate school. He described the school he was assigned to as, and I quote, “nothing more than adult day care … a dangerous daycare.”
But even though he was failing his classes, the school simply passed him along from year-to-year, giving him D’s and sending the not-so-subtle message that they didn’t think Michael would amount to much.”
Try to imagine a US Secretary of Education spending all their working hours attacking charter schools. You can’t imagine it because it because it would never happen.
This is DAILY in ed reform. And we’re all paying for it.
I reject the idea that I have some duty to back federal employees who push their privatization agenda by attacking the schools they supposedly work to help. It’s nonsense. I have NO such duty.
How about they leave public school students out of this anti-public school campaign they’re conducting. They don’t do jack to help our kids anyway. Just leave the 90% out of it. They’re irrelevant to public school parents and children- offer us absolutely no value and often do actual harm.
Cross posted at
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/DeVos-is-Intent-on-Revivin-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Choice_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Identity-170530-645.html
Public school parents (so, 90% of parents) should really take 20 minutes and read the US Department on their children’s schools:
https://www.ed.gov/
100% negative. Offer absolutely no value to 90% of children and parents.
I’m not clear why we’re all paying for this. Can I trade these salaries and get field trips or an art teacher back? I’d literally rather pay a good custodian. Better return on my investment.
The picture that one certain ed. reformer presented of public schools varies about whether he was in or out of power.
When LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy was angling to get chosen as the next U.S. Secretary of Ed,, he put out all these glowing reports and gave effusive speeches about how well all categories of schools — traditional public, charter, magnet, etc. — were doing and had improved under his reign.
However, after Deasy was pushed out and went back to working for Eli Broad, he followed Eli’s orders and helped create the infamous Broad plan (actually the the Broad-Walmart plan and the Waltons were also instrumental in this), in which he argued the opposite about the same traditional public schools he had just been praising. They’re horrible, miserable failure factories that have to be replaced by high-performing charters.
Building new public schools to replace aging facilities benefits students in those schools:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716304514
After Obama, Congress and Kasich cut public school funding, we passed a local levy to replace a 100 year old facility.
Now I send my tax money to DC and Columbus and it disappears without a trace into the black hole of ed reform, never to be seen again, so it wasn’t a TOTAL win, but we did manage to improve something for one public school, which is more than any of these federal and state employees have done.
I used to think that saving parts of USDE would be a good thing, but I’m starting to feel that the whole department should just disappear. DeVos could just go home and get out of the way of any kind of progress. Maybe it would be better to allow states to make their own education decisions? Discrimination issues could best be served by a state run agency. Special Ed could be handled at the state level. The only thing worth pushing into another Federal agency should be issues dealing with college loans and pell grants. As it stands now, no good decisions are being made at the Fed level (and haven’t been for many years). Maybe it’s worth a try to let the states handle these issues. It brings everything closer to home for parents to fight for what is best and for what they want in the way of public education? Just a thought as I’m getting frustrated with the forever waiting for “good public schools” with good curriculum and less testing.
I don’t see any good in waiting for Indiana to do something beneficial for students. I keep writing to my state senator and representative who occasionally send out notices of what a great job they are doing. Voucher and charters are rampant in this state. There are no statistics to show that they are doing any good, but that doesn’t matter.
Pence was our governor. I believe he took up the offer to be VP because it was very likely that he would have lost the vote for governor if he’d stayed.
But I don’t see any good in waiting for the Federal government to do anything beneficial for students. Maybe (?) if everything goes back to the states, parents will be more inclined to step up, testing will lessen, curriculum development will be returned to the teachers. The Feds in education have been a disaster….especially with trying to make everything the same all over the country. Free Market and political think tanks would have to work much harder to get their hands on tax dollars, testing companies would have to deal with 50 states for contracts (they likely wouldn’t…..and would go away), less data collection of children. Creating the USDE was the worst thing that Jimmy Carter did as President and I know that he didn’t mean for it to turn out this way. I’m glad that I was educated in the late 60’s-early 80’s BEFORE ed reform took a slimy turn for the worse (under RR). I know it always seems better looking back and I’m sure there were troubles, but no where near the troubles we have right now. Sorry, but I think the only way to get rid of DeVos, charters, choice, vouchers, testing, CBL, data collection etc etc etc is to just get rid of the department that has created all of the problems. Drain the whole swamp that is the USDE. I’m tired of waiting for good things for my children since their whole school career has been nothing but bad reform (I have a 9th grader and a 7th grader) after bad reform.
“see any good waiting for Indiana”, nope. Former Gov. Mitch Daniel is a member of the “liberal” Urban Institute’s board. The anti-pension John and Laura Arnold Foundation are funding the Institute’s pension project.
BTW, Urban Institute’s pension project staff photos appear a bit monochromatic.
Even though there is no evidence supporting the merit of “choice,” right wing ideologues will continue to sing its praise. Even though DeVos should be representing all children, she only represents her “choice” agenda which will promote greater segregation. Taxpayers should not have to pay for others’ choices, particularly when there is little to no value to it, or oversight and accountability. Public schools that serve the common good are for all students, and public funds should serve the needs of those attending the common schools. Once DeVos can impose her harmful agenda, she will move on to dismantle higher education while she allows predatory lending practices to exploit needy college students.
“Even though DeVos should be representing all children, she only represents her “choice” agenda which will promote greater segregation.”
“Her choice”, exactly retired teacher. It’s all about her. Just another functionary in the most me, me, me administration this country has ever seen (and I thought the epitome of me-ism was Georgie the Least). It’s all about THE BETSY, nothing more. She must feel so good at night knowing she’s promoting herself instead of the public school students (eh, Chiara!). . . . NOT! Egotistical bastards have no clue that they are that egotistical, that it’s all about them and no one else.
“the U.S. Department of Education has no responsibility to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender identity. . . .
“Does that EVEN sound remotely like America to you? How can it be okay for our tax dollars to promote blatant discrimination? This is essentially state-sponsored discrimination.
Our tax dollars have been going to blatant discrimination since the advent of mandatory standardized testing from NCLB. Discrimination of/by mental endowment, capability, faculty, etc. . . is deemed fine and dandy. It’s okay to discriminate against a student and parent desire to further his/her education when they cannot “make the grade” on a given test-tests in which the results are COMPLETELY INVALID. Just as discriminating a student on his/her normal amount of skin pigmentation or because of their innate gender or connatural or acquired disability is ethically, morally and legally wrong, so should discrimination by mental acuity be judged as not only unconstitutional but also morally and ethically wrong.
When, oh when will this country understand the multitude of harms forcibly imposed on many students by the educational malpractice of standardized testing?
When will we stand up and SHOUT OUT the insanities and noxiousness of the disservice of the sorting, separating and ranking of students, rewarding some and censuring and penalizing others?
What the “F” is wrong with the so many otherwise outstanding folks that are teachers who insist upon implementing the nefarious practice of discrimination that is the result of standardized testing?
Where the hell have we gone wrong?
Why? Why? Why?
Will we ever break the spell of error and falsehood that is the standardized testing regime?
My heart aches for those students so discriminated against by the testing regimes.
When will it ever stop?
Goddamn it all!!
Charter schools are the profit-making part of the “education reform/choice/voucher” movement that has from its very beginnings has been rooted in racism. The movement has always had resegregation of America’s schools as its core agenda. The deceptive call for “choice” and vouchers was the first racist response to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in which the Court declared that “separate but equal” public schools are inherently unequal and ordered racial integration of the public schools. That ruling triggered “white flight” from public schools to private schools — but parents quickly realized that the tuition cost of private schools was more than they wanted to pay out-of-pocket. That realization led political and private resegregationists to the concoct the “reform” of vouchers, and to sell it to eager parents by deceptively marketing it then —and still today — as merely giving parents a “choice.”
Reports from the NAACP and ACLU have revealed the facts about just how charter schools are resegregating our nation’s schools, as well as discriminating racially and socioeconomically against American children, and last year the NAACP Board of Directors passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion and for the strengthening of oversight in governance and practice. Moreover, a very detailed nationwide research by The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA shows in clear terms that private charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students.
The 1950’s voucher crusade faded away when it became clear that because of school attendance boundaries no more than a few token blacks would be attending formerly all-white public schools. In 1972 when the Supreme Court finally ordered busing to end the ongoing de facto segregation, the reform movement rose from its grave and has been alive ever since then trying new tactics to restore racial segregation because it’s unlikely that the Court’s racial integration order can ever be reversed. When it became clear in the 1980’s that vouchers would never become widespread, the segregationists tried many other routes to restore racial segregation, and the most successful has been charter schools because charter schools can be sold to blithely unaware do-gooder billionaires as well as to unscrupulous profiteers who recognized charter schools as a way to divert vast amounts of tax money into their own pockets and into the pockets of supportive politicians at every level of government.
An essential part of the strategy to mask their underlying motives has been for segregationists to sell the public on the necessity for charter schools because public schools are allegedly “failing.” With all manner of “research” that essentially compares apples to oranges against foreign nations’ students, and with the self-fulfilling prophecy of dismal public school performance generated by drastic underfunding of public schools, and with condemnation of public school teachers based on statistically invalid student test scores, the segregationists are succeeding in resegregating education in America via what are basically private charter schools that are funded with public money.
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property. These aren’t onerous burdens on charter schools; these are only common sense requirements to assure taxpayers that their money is being properly and effectively spent to educate children and isn’t simply ending up in private pockets or on the bottom line of hedge funds.
These aren’t “burdensome” requirements for charter schools — they are simply common sense safeguards that public tax money is actually being used to maximum effect to teach our nation’s children.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
803 603-7796- my phone number
Sent from my iPad
>
“God made the idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board” –Mark Twain