Betsy DeVos may be mocked by the media and parents, but she has a friend in Mike Petrilli at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Is TBF angling for a federal grant? Mike was an original member of the “NeverTrump” movement, but now he is very impressed by Betsy DeVos. He is star struck, in fact.
Congress has handled her budget requests unsympathetically. She asked for deep cuts in the ED Department’s budget, but Congress increased spending on the programs she wanted to eliminate. The ED budget is actually larger, not smaller.
Betsy wanted $1 billion for school choice, but Congress killed that.
The only win she got was an increase in the funding of charter schools, which now goes up to $400 million a year.
This is a big win for ALEC, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and all the Red State governors who want to privatize public education. Make no mistake, it is a win for Donald Trump.
The big push to eliminate public schools in urban districts will resume, thanks to Congress.
This surely makes Corey Booker, one of DeVos’s strongest supporters, happy, along with Andrew Cuomo (NY), Dannel Malloy (CT), and Jerry Brown (CA).
Democrats who say they oppose the DeVos agenda of privatization (like Senator Patty Murray of Washington State) got rolled by DeVos.
New funding for charters, despite the scandals and frauds association with them, will be at least $600 million from the federal government, with its $400 million a year, and the Walton family’s $200 million a year.
If charters were really saving lives, as Petrilli claims, why are Detroit, Milwaukee, and D.C. still among the lowest performing districts in the nation, even though they are all charter-heavy?
When public money goes to private entrepreneurs without accountability, that is an invitation to fraud. And there are plenty of fraudsters lined up to take the money and run.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
DeVos should never be mocked. She’s telling us quite openly what she’s going to do and we’d be advised to take her seriously. She’s not a ditz, she just plays one on TV.
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Indeed, DeVos is a master at “playing DITZ.”
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My guess is this. Any sweet talk from the Fordham is always in the hope of getting money, and the agenda is not to support public schools.
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Whenever you have ass kissing like we have here, the main reason is money and you can bet this has to do with getting money from devos, no doubt about it. Just like devos said, the schools in Michigan need to do better there is no doubt about it – said in that midwestern drawl
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Instead of using money to directly serve our needy students, our government is providing millions of dollars to private entrepreneurs that know little about education or poor students. A much better use for the funds would be to use the money to provide some level of equity to urban districts that have great needs, but get shortchanged in aid formulas. No money is wasted when the funds go to direct services. Our government is more interested in offering corporate welfare than equity.
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How much of that money will be going to the charter network that already has many millions in the bank — Success Academy? After all, Eva Moskowitz expects her reward for fighting so hard to insure that Betsy DeVos was the Secretary of Education and making sure that everyone knew that Moskowitz gave her the seal of approval as someone just as concerned about poor kids as Moskowitz herself is. I’m assuming that Eva Moskowitz fought so hard for DeVos because she was expecting more financial largesse to be given to her charters directly from the government trough. More money for her charters always means less for public schools. Surely that unquenchable greed for taxpayer dollars is the only reason that Moskowitz fought so hard for DeVos.
Otherwise, we are left with the idea that Moskowitz fought so hard for DeVos because she really and truly believed that she was an excellent choice and she knew better than all DeVos’ critics that she was truly a wonderful and terrific choice and one of the best Trump could have made! And what does that say about the judgement of Eva Moskowitz? Imagine this woman who adores Betsy DeVos and thinks so highly of DeVos training teachers to be just like the educators she admires so much? Scary. “Be like DeVos” because she is so terrific and wonderful. I wonder if that’s what the children at Success Academy learn. Or else.
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Privatizers think they are successful because they have different values and therefore different goals. They have no evidence that charter schools and vouchers produce equity, because equity is not their goal.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/9/1747809/-Privatize-Schools-Look-for-Evidence-But-Not-at-First
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Thanks for your post. Privatization fails on all three values. It is not democratic, equitable or diverse. Privatization has also fostered a tremendous amount of waste, fraud and embezzling so it is a wasteful use of public funds. At the same time it undermines the schools that serve the common good and are democratic and transparent. Privatization sacrifices the many to benefit the few.
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I’ve said for a how now that Mike Petrilli is a shill. A weasel. A huckster.
Petrilli has no shame. Petrilli makes outrageous claims. H has said he’s “one of the nation’s most trusted education analysts.” That’s an obvious lie. It’s like saying that John Stossel and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are “trusted” sources.
He says – despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary – that “our education system is tattered…too much is mediocre or worse.” He says “our suburban schools are just getting by. They may not be dropout factories, but they’re not preparing anywhere near enough of their pupils to revive our economy.” As if public schools CAUSED the Great Recession and piled up deficits and debt in the first place. As if public educators where the ones who recently slashed taxes for corporations and the rich, increasing the federal this year to nearly a trillion dollars and adding $2.5 trillion ot the nation’s debt in the years to come.
Petrillli is all-in on vouchers, saying that “one of the best ways to get more bang for the education buck is to strap it to the backs of individual kids and let parents decide which schools deliver the best value for money.” He has no commitment to public education whatsoever.
Petrilli prescribes more “rigorous academic standards and tests” for the public schools. He has said that we“should rate schools on an easy-to-understand scale, ideally from A to F, as Florida started doing under Governor Jeb Bush.” Sure. Let’s rely on Jeb Bush.
As a parent active in opposing the Bush agenda in Florida noted, “People are starting to realize that Jeb and his reforms are not good for children and not good for schools. They are meant to privatize public education.”
This should be no surprise. Petrilli has written that “Republican governors like Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, and Scott Walker are demonstrating real reform.” Huh? Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who hates public servants, including teachers, with a passion? John Kasich of Ohio? Even his Republican colleagues didn’t like his education ideas. Chris Christie of New Jersey? Christie opposed equitable school funding in favor of “closing low performing schools, adding more charter schools and introducing merit pay for teachers.” And Mitch Daniels in Indiana? Did Petrilli not know about Daniels’ A-F school grading scandal?
Petrilli is a conservative charlatan who cannot and should not be trusted.
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I can’t find anything on how the federal government chooses the charters they promote.
Anyone have any idea who does this, what the requirements are, whether there’s any analysis of where these charters are opening?
I recall the federal government increased grants to Ohio right in the middle of a big (state) charter scandal. They seemed to be completely unaware of what was going on on in Ohio. How are these grants awarded? What are the measures they use to allocate federal funding for new charters? Is there some kind of board? Who are the board members? Why isn’t this transparent?
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This is the same cost-benefit analysis a lot of people are making with Trump.
If his administration harms public schools, well, so what? They benefit charters and vouchers, so it’s all good. DeVos knows this. She’s been a charter/voucher lobbyists for 30 years. As long as she keeps the charter/voucher funding flowing ed reform will applaud.
It was never about “improving public schools”. That’s why ed reformer are such lousy advocates for public schools. They don’t value them.
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“Welcome to your first day of school!” That was how bubbly Apple employees, decked out in the green-and-yellow outfits that matched the colors of Lane Tech College Prep in Chicago, welcomed arrivals to the company’s highly-anticipated education event this morning.
Attendees were given a schedule of “classes” and directed to the cafeteria for orientation. Among the 1,000 present were former vice president Al Gore, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and 300 educators from around the world.”
Amusing. All these politicians out using a public school to sell ed tech product when none of them support public schools.
Ed reform completely ignores public schools UNLESS it’s about public schools buying product from the burgeoning ed tech industry.
THEN all of a sudden we’re important
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Education Week has turned into a platform for selling EdTech and Common Core.
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West Virginia and now Oklahoma:
“For the first time since Oklahoma’s political leaders began pushing for more revenue last year, the House of Representatives mustered enough votes to raise several taxes, ”
States have been gutting public school funding since 2010 and ed reform said nothing.
The ONLY people who advocated for public schools in these states are teachers.
No one else could be bothered. The “education advocates” in ed reform were too busy pushing vouchers to even notice that 90% of the kids in the state were getting hurt.
http://newsok.com/article/5588485
Public school families in West Virginia and Oklahoma can thank their public school teachers for advocating on their behalf. No one else lifted a finger to help them, including the state politicians we pay to do this work.
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I’m not sure where to post this but I believe it is something important for people who want to go into the teaching field. This is a mean, sloppy way to screw potential teachers who go into the field and aren’t wealthy.
……………..
Teachers Feel Betrayed By Federal Grant Program Meant To Help Them
The TEACH Grant helps teachers-to-be pay for college or a master’s degree in exchange for working in high-need subject areas or schools. But many tell NPR that after they started teaching, the grant became a loan they were forced to repay with interest.
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/596162853/597541708
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