Delve into the mind of Betsy DeVos.
She is the first Secretary of Education ever to address the American Legislative Exchange Council, the secretive far-right organization funded by the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and major corporations, with the intent of getting rid of unions, standards for teachers, environmental regulations, and anything that gets in the way of corporations.
Here is the speech she delivered today, released by the U.S. Department of Education.
Jeannie Kaplan, who served on the Denver school board for two terms, has been a sharp critic of the district’s devotion to charters and high-stakes testing. She has documented time and again that ten years of “reform” has produced nothing positive for students. Presently, the school board’s seven members are all corporate reformers. She hopes that this will change as parents and educators join together to fight DeVos, Corporate Greed, and Privatization.
The appearance of Betsy DeVos at the ALEC annual meeting was the setting for a protest that involved a thousand motivated activists.
Jeannie describes the joyous event here.
She felt the stirrings of the spirit of resistance from her 1960s youth. Ordinary people were standing up to corporate power and rightwing extremism and loudly saying, NO.
Why such emphasis in Denver? Because Denver has been at the center of the failing “education reform” movement for the past 12 years. And while many “reform” organizations keep trying to make Denver Public Schools look successful, the academic outcomes continue to be dreadful, opportunity gaps and segregation of schools keep increasing. Four of seven seats are up this November. Supporters of real public education, lead by Our Denver Our Schools are working hard to get these four candidates elected. Their election could stem the failing “reform.”
Xoxhitl (Sotchi) Gaytan, District 2, Southwest Denver
Dr. Carrie A. Olson, District 3, Central Denver
Tay Anderson, District 4, Northeast Denver
Robert Speth, At-large
And in spite of the incumbents’ attempts to distance themselves (one incumbent actually appeared at the rally long enough to have his picture taken with his anti-DeVos sign) from DeVos/Trump, here are some of the similarities:
* DeVos and the DPS Board support the privatization of public education, funneling public money to schools that are privately administered and serve corporate interests.
* DeVos and the DPS Board support punitive school closure policies based on high stakes testing forcing schools to compete to stay open.
* DeVos and the DPS Board support policies that have resulted in increased segregation and poor academic outcomes for students of color, children facing poverty and homelessness, English language learners and students with disabilities.
* DeVos and the DPS Board put the needs of competition and corporations before the welfare of kids and the communities in which they live.
NPR wrote about the protest awaiting Betsy DeVos in Denver. Apparently she is speaking today, although that fact is on neither the ALEC agenda nor the Department of Education website.
She is the first Secretary of Education to address this extremist group. The Koch brothers and Dezvos family foundations are among the funders of this anti-government group.
Curiously, NPR described the protestors as “left-wing activists and teacher groups.” Why not supporters of public schools and educators?
Curiously, the story does not use the adjective right-wing to describe ALEC, which is funded by extremists of the radical right and major corporations, with the goals of eliminating gun controls and environmental regulations and privatizing education for profit.
The picture tells a better story than the words.
Other news outlets focused on Trump’s regret about appointing Jeff Sessions. Or his slap at Rod Rosenstein, Comey and others.
But this is what Moyers’ website loved:
“If you’ve been away from the news for the past 18 hours or so, the New York Times interview in which Trump rages against Jeff Sessions, Jim Comey, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and maybe the White House groundskeeper is at the link. That’s what everyone in the office is talking about. And here are some additional excerpts, featuring gems like this one about French President Emmanuel Macron:
TRUMP: He’s a great guy. Smart. Strong. Loves holding my hand.
HABERMAN: I’ve noticed.
TRUMP: People don’t realize he loves holding my hand. And that’s good, as far as that goes. I mean, really. He’s a very good person. And a tough guy, but look, he has to be. I think he is going to be a terrific president of France. But he does love holding my hand.”
Arthur Goldstein teaches English language learners at Frabis Lewis High School in New York City.
In this post, he refutes attacks on teachers by Campbell Brown and the Wall Street Journal.
New York City has something called the Absent Teacher Reserve pool, consisting mostly of teachers whose jobs disappeared when their school was closed, through no fault of theirs. The ATR pool was created during the Bloomberg-Klein regime in 2005.
Outsiders like Brown and the WSJ are certain that these displaced teachers must be criminals, perverts, or incompetents.
Goldstein says they are wrong and explains why.
The great puzzle in Kansas is how the State got such a thoughtful Supreme Court, one that actually cares about education.
Kansas is in a deep budget hole because Governor Sam Brownback cut taxes repeatedly, in the belief that low taxes would produce economic growth. Only it didn’t, and the schools are in big trouble.
The court has repeatedly ordered the state legislature to produce a school funding plan that meets the requirements of the state constitution. After years of budget cuts, the state’s schools are in dire need of money. At one point, legislators grumbled ominous threats about how they might shake up the court to undermine its authority.
But now the lawyers for the state are in court, and the justices are insistent on a commitment to a fair funding plan.
Attorneys for the state and the Legislature faced a barrage of questions from skeptical Kansas Supreme Court justices Tuesday scrutinizing the Legislature’s school finance plan.
Solicitor general Stephen McAllister and Jeff King, a former Senate vice president, sought to fend off claims from school districts that Kansas is doing too little to make up for several years in which budget cuts and funding stagnation became the norm and school budgets fell behind inflation.
The justices repeatedly interrupted their arguments to seek deeper clarification of calculations the state cited to justify adding $293 million to school funding over the next two years. And they showed some interest in potentially retaining jurisdiction once they have issued their ruling, to ensure the state complies.
McAllister and King stood their ground, arguing the state’s solution meets the court’s previous demands.
“S.B. 19 makes substantial efforts to improve the funding,” McAllister said, using the plan’s legislative bill number.
Digging into the math
In the span of Gannon v. Kansas’ seven-year history, district court judges and the state Supreme Court have repeatedly struck down Kansas’ school funding schemes as unconstitutional.
Among the justices’ concerns in this latest round of the legal battle was a statistical analysis of student achievement that the Legislature generated this spring and used to extrapolate what statewide funding should be. The calculation was based on spending levels at 41 school districts found to be performing well on certain academic outcomes.
“I understand the math,” Justice Dan Biles told McAllister. “I need to know what makes that reliable and valid, and I’m not seeing it here.”
‘I understand the math. I need to know what makes that reliable and valid, and I’m not seeing it here.’ — Justice Dan Biles
The justices homed in on methodological particulars, such as the use of averages instead of medians and whether the omission of budget changes at six school districts could have skewed the results. And they questioned whether lawmakers had cherry-picked portions of past school finance studies to minimize the state’s financial obligations.
Justice Eric Rosen asked about the state’s reliance on local property taxes to fund education through a system that allows school boards to elect to spend more. The concern is that poorer school districts are less likely to do so because of the burden on local taxpayers.
“What happens to those children?” he said, referring to students in those areas.
Indiana finally got a research study of its voucher program, and the results were lackluster at best. The study showed that students who used vouchers saw their scores go down; after a few years, those who persisted caught up with their public school peers, but the lowest-scoring students dropped out and returned to public schools. Indiana has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on vouchers.
Legislators don’t care. They want to send more money away from public schools. The results don’t matter. They have stopped claiming that vouchers will “save” poor kids from failing schools. No one was saved.
They don’t care. They want to do harm to the schools that enroll the vast majority of students.
Why? I don’t know. What do you think can explain their determination to throw more money into vouchers now that they know they are ineffective?
Florida parents and educators opposed HB 7069, a bill which hurts public schools and enriches charter schools (private contractor schools), but the legislature didn’t listen. (Key legislators have financial ties to the charter industry.) They urged Governor Rick Scott to veto it but he didn’t listen.
Now school boards, led by the one in Broward County, are suing to block the law and have it declared unconstitutional.
The Palm Beach Post urges the Palm Beach school board to join the suit. Perhaps the courts will listen.
“Kudos then to the Broward County School Board for being the first to get this legal action started. It has outlined five grounds to challenge the law. Among them, aspects friendly to charter schools such as making it easier for a charter — or “School of Hope” — to open near an academically struggling traditional public school.
“Perhaps the most salient argument, however, will be that the omnibus legislation violates the Florida Constitution’s requirement that each bill deal with a single subject. To help guarantee passage, the law — championed by House Speaker Richard Corcoran — mashed together bills that dealt with, among other things, eliminating a state math exam, requiring most public elementary schools to offer daily recess, and providing more money for teacher bonuses and a school-voucher program for students with disabilities.
“If that doesn’t raise questions about the single-subject rules, how about this: The constitution also requires that a bill’s “one subject” be “briefly expressed in the title.” The title for HB 7069 is more than 4,000 words.
“Corcoran’s office says the law — which essentially rewrites the state’s public school system — falls under the “single subject” of “K-12 education policy.”
“The Speaker called the Broward lawsuit “another example of the educational bureaucracy putting the adults who administer the schools ahead of the children who attend the schools.”
“Not only is it clueless,” he added, “it is also arguably heartless, to sue to stop school children from getting recess, disabled children from getting funding, poor children from getting out of failure factories and teachers from getting more pay.”
“No, Mr. Speaker. What’s “clueless” and “arguably heartless” is holding things such as teacher pay, help for disabled students and recess for elementary school kids hostage in order to siphon more money from struggling traditional public schools to funnel to less accountable, for-profit charter school operators.
“There are many well-run charters in Palm Beach County; and our district is better for it. But there is no evidence that as a group they perform any better for our tax dollars. In fact, hundreds of charter schools have failed in the state of Florida, and dozens more are academically struggling.”
Why is it that Florida wants to divert funding from public schools to contractor schools? Follow the money.
The Afghan girls’ robotics team had difficulties entering the United State (ya know, they might be terrorists) but when they finally arrived at the international competition in Washington, they stole the show. Their robot was named “Better Idea of Afghan Girls.”
““I am so happy and so tired,” Alireza Mehraban, an Afghan software engineer who is the team’s mentor, said after the competition concluded.
“Mr. Mehraban said the contest had been an opportunity to change perceptions about the girls’ country. “We’re not terrorists,” he said. “We’re simple people with ideas. We need a chance to make our world better. This is our chance.”
“Yet with more than 150 countries represented in the competition, the Afghan teenagers were not the only students who overcame bureaucratic and logistical challenges to showcase their ingenuity. Visa applications were initially denied for at least 60 of the participating teams, Mr. Kamen said.
“On Monday, with the news media swarming the Afghan girls, a team from Africa — five Moroccan students who also got their visas two days before the competition — huddled in a downstairs corner to repair their robot, which had been disassembled for last-minute shipment. An American high school built a robot on behalf of the Iranian team when sanctions on technology exports stopped the shipment of their materials kit. And on Sunday, the Estonian team built a new robot in four hours before the opening ceremony, the original lost in transit somewhere between Paris and Amsterdam.
“But it was the Afghan team and Team Hope, which consists of three Syrian refugee students, that ensnared the attention of the competitors, the judges and supporters.
“The high school students exchanged buttons and signed shirts, hats and flags draped around their shoulders. The Australian team passed out pineapple-shaped candy and patriotic stuffed koalas to clip on lanyards, while the Chilean team offered bags with regional candy inside.
“God made this planet for something like this, all the people coming together as friends,” said Alineza Khalili Katoulaei, 18, the captain of the Iranian team, gesturing to the Iraqi and Israeli teams standing nearby. “Politics cannot stop science competitions like this.”
Gary Sasso, dean of education at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, asks a simple question: if billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad care about our nation’s future, why don’t they help the public schools, which enroll 85% of America’s children?
Sasso wrote in Salon:
“Obscured by the rancor of the school reform debate is this fact: Socio-economic status is the most relevant determinant of student success in school.
“It is not a coincidence that the so-called decline of the American public school system has coincided with the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report, the wealth disparity between upper-income and middle-income families is at a record high. Upper-income families are nearly seven times wealthier than middle-income ones, compared to 3.4 times richer in 1983. Upper-income family wealth is nearly 70 times that of the country’s lower-income families, also the widest wealth gap between these families in 30 years.”
So why do the 1% blame teachers and unions for sociology-economic conditions they can’t control?
“Charter schools will never be the answer to improving education for all. It is simply not scaleable. And yet titans of industry such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walton family, and billionaires such as John Paulson who earlier this year gave $8.5 million to New York’s Success Academy charter school system, are pouring their millions into support for charter schools—millions that will not, incidentally, be invested in improving the schools that the vast majority of U.S. students attend: traditional public schools.
“Can it be a coincidence that those who have benefited most from the last 50 years of steadily increasing income inequality—the top 10 percent–support an education solution that hinges on denigrating public school teachers, dismantling unions and denying that income inequality is the underlying condition at the root of the problem?”
The facts don’t support their crusade for charters, he says, so they must be driven by ideology.
What do you think?
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