I have said it before and I will say it again. Betsy DeVos is the most effective weapon against corporate reform, because she activates resistance and personifies noblesse oblige.
Former New Orleans charter leader Andre Perry has become a thoughtful critic of charters, and he points out that DeVos has become a major cause of a widespread charter backlash.
As Perry puts it, Betsy Devos’s support of charter schools “spells disaster for their Democrat backers.” How can charters be, as their billionaire supporters say, “the civil rights issue of our time” when DeVos and every Red State governor supports them?
The fact that she wanted to cut the Special Olympics by $18 million at the same time she proposed to increase charter school funding by $60 million sent a loud message about what matters to her. Choice above all else.
The teacher strikes in many states specifically protested the introduction or expansion of charters because they drain money from public schools. In Los Angeles, striking teachers demanded a moratorium on new charters, and the state is now considering legislation to rein in the voracious industry.
In Milwaukee, a slate backed by the Working Families Party and the teachers’ union swept to victory in a recent election.
The drumbeat of scandal and failure haunts the charter industry, and DeVos’s warm embrace is a flashing danger sign.
Perry notes that charter teachers tend to be less diverse than those in public schools.
The price of “reform,” he writes, is steep:
As a former charter leader in New Orleans myself, I’ve seen black and brown communities have to make trade-offs like losing political control, teaching positions, and funding in the name of educational reform. If people of color don’t realize direct economic, political, and educational benefits, then it’s not real reform. Consequently, we need reforms that empower people, districts, and students on the way to educational progress—and hiring and retaining people of color should be an explicit focus of reform.
Should communities of color be required to lose political control and teaching positions in exchange for charters, which may or may not survive, and may or may not get higher scores than the public schools they replaced?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Correction:
“The AVALANCHE/FLOOD/TSUNAMI* of scandal and failure haunts the charter industry,”
*Take your pick
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“If people of color don’t realize direct economic, political, and educational benefits, then it’s not real reform.”
Real reform benefits all children regardless of skin color.
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Well said. So-called reform should lift all boats, but it has failed to do so. Instead, it is a form of colonialism where mostly white people decide what people of color should get. “Choice” in every country has increased segregation and created winners and losers.
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Duane,
You are absolutely correct. Thank you for stating these two truths.
When I first saw those LOTTERIES for poor people of color, I wept for them. To see all those people crammed in a room waiting to see who’s names were drawn to attend a charter school far away from their own neighborhoods and then cheering for the winners, made me ILL. It was like they were so brainwashed that they didn’t realize they were just participating in their own neighborhood schools’ demise as well as the safety of their children.
Winners and losers have NO PLACE in any school.
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Minor, perhaps trivial observation: Interesting how long term efforts to objectify the term Democratic has gained traction so that even Democrats (assuming Perry is a Democrat or at least not a Republican) are unconsciously accepting the propaganda. It should be “spells disaster for their Democratic backers.” When we accept the propaganda and don’t push back to correct the record, we continue to lose.
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Democrats should cringe at being associated with choice and charters that have quickly morphed into “vouchers for all” in some red states. Vouchers make no sense at all as students generally get a much worse education.
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For me, “DFER” is a swear word.
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DeVos and, by extension, the USDoE, seem to be against democracy period. She was in KY this week with mini-Trump Bevin and lackey Commissioner of Education to talk about the federal tax credit. Student journalists were turned away because they didn’t RSVP for the event. So, what they’re saying is that the meeting wasn’t even an open meeting.
“There was no representative from a public school district on the roundtable. When a reporter asked Bevin about that Wednesday, he said, ‘Every single person who sat around this table cares about the children, not about funding, not about territory, not about power, not about politics. They care about parents. They care about students. It was a broad representation of people who care about those things.'”
The hidden message…..public schools do not care about children. That, in my opinion, is the REAL message being portrayed by these “deformers.”
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article229449929.html
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Tax credits for wealthy individuals are no solution for a better education. These credits erode the tax base so there is less money for the common good, ie public education. The schools DeVos is trying to shift students into offer an education of questionable value. These low value vouchers will be for religious schools that may be creationism instead of science. They may also teach bias instead of facts. Nobody oversees the quality of the education. It is a scam in my opinion.
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correction: teach creationism instead of science.
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Keep saying it to everyone you know: “Tax credits for wealthy individuals erode the tax base so there is less money for” not just public ed, but roads, bridges, libraries, museums, post offices, VA hospitals etc. ESA’s, a whole ‘nother shell-game to school dunderheaded taxpayers on—they’re still insisting that 2-&-3-tiered tiered school systems are cheaper/ better than pooling limited resources to keep one afloat..
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& even if they like lowering taxes for “wealthy individuals” (after all, they might be one someday when they win the lottery and their kid becomes the American Idol): how do they feel about letting profitable corporations pay into Aunt Millie’s Evangelist Academy instead of state coffers? Does that make up for outsourcing low-level jobs & h(1)b-ing in high-level techies?
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The “benefits for everyone” and “lift all the boats” talk is tiring for me as a woman of color and professional educator. I want ALL children to be successful in learning and life, but the success of black and brown children is especially personal to me; the stakes are SO MUCH HIGHER for those children. If we have been the targeted communities of these reforms, and we haven’t seen any lasting benefits then it’s time to let that s**t as we know it, go. Some years ago, I read an article he wrote in which he said, “Black people don’t necessarily need choice; black people need POWER.”
I agree with Mr. Perry. Period.
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Was there a point when Perry thought predators were benign? Why would we be surprised when billionaires from the hedge funds and when tech monopolists exploit the vulnerable?
An ability to recognize and neutralize an enemy before it attacks is necessary for self-preservation.
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