The editorial board of the PLD Lamplighter (Paul Laurence Dunbar High School) in Lexington, Kentucky, wanted to confer the “Roundtable” that featured Governor Matt Bevin and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. They were turned away. What does their opinion matter? They are “only” students.
Only one student was invited to join the Roundtable discussion about education in Kentucky. She attends a Roman Catholic girls’ school in Louisville.
“We are student journalists who wanted to cover an event in our community featuring the Secretary of Education, but ironically, we couldn’t get in without an invitation.
“We learned of this event on April 16, as others did, over social media and from our local news stations. At that point, we immediately began making plans to be there because as young journalists, we appreciate any opportunity received to demonstrate our professionalism. These types of events are where we learn, and chances like this do not come around often.
“Local news station Lex18 posted its first article regarding the event on April 16 at 10:43 a.m. It discussed how Ms. DeVos would be attending two events in Kentucky, one in Lexington, and the other in Marshall County. There was no mention of an invitation or RSVP needed to attend the event.
“Another local station, WKYT, posted its first article regarding this event at 10:44 a.m. There was no mention of an invitation or RSVP needed to attend the event in this article either.
“Why was this information only shared a little more than 24 hours before the event? When the Secretary of Education is visiting your city, you’d think you’d have a little more of a heads up.
“We can’t help but suspect that the intention was to prevent people from attending. Also, it was held at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. What student or educator is free at that time?
“And as students, we are the ones who are going to be affected by the proposed changes discussed at the roundtable, yet we were not allowed inside. How odd is it that even though future generations of students’ experiences could be based on what was discussed, that we, actual students, were turned away?
“We expected the event to be intense. We expected there to be a lot of information to cover. But not being able to exercise our rights under the First Amendment was something we never thought would happen. We weren’t prepared for that.
“It was heartbreaking to us, as young journalists fired up to cover an event regarding the future of education, to leave empty-handed. But as we researched we learned that we were not the only ones who were disappointed and frustrated.
“There were social media posts that exhibited confusion from parents, students, and educators—especially because no public school representatives were participants in the event.
“We emailed FCPS Superintendent Manny Caulk to ask if he had been invited, and he answered that he had not.
“Of the 173 school districts in Kentucky that deal directly with students, none were represented at the table. Zero. This is interesting because the supposed intention of the event was to include stakeholders–educators, students, and parents.”
Hey, student journalists, don’t give up.
Your State Commissioner is a DeVos groupie.
Make your voices heard.
This guy is giving your futures away.
He doesn’t care about you.
He is sucking up to the Queen of Privatization.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The journalists were prohibited from reporting because Republicans hate democracy.
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It demonstrates how fragile the billionaire bumpkin is. She can’t even face high school students. They would outsmart her in a heartbeat. And the fact that they would be from public schools is something she couldn’t even bear. Her worst nightmare. Well, that and getting a scuff on one of her yachts.
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DeVos does not care to listen to anyone outside the echo chamber. Noblesse oblige.
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No blessed obligation!
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Why would greedy, corrupt, hate-filled fascists and racists want anyone, even high school journalists, to cover their meeting where they are plotting the downfall of the U.S. Constitutional Republic?
Trump, DeVos and Bevon, et al, clearly want to get rid of the 1st Amendment ASAP and start executing or throwing reporters, editors, and publishers that won’t fall into line and do what they are told in prisons.
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Bev, DeVos
Cosmic alignment towards a ’90s new jack swing / public education hater band.
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Bless these young people for making news of how they were treated. Awesome!!! Such young people give me hope! You go, Olivia Doyle and Abigail Wheatley and the rest of the Lamplighter team!!! You are lamps unto the future and make us all proud!!! Thank you for keeping real journalism alive. We need that now more than ever.
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People from public schools are never invited to DeVos events.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that the public school students were barred- public school supporters, teachers, students and families are not welcome at these voucher promotion political events.
The community college should have refused to go along with the censorship. They’re a publicly-funded entity and the vast majority of the students they have probably graduated from local public schools. Do they serve Betsy DeVos’ political agenda or the local public and their current and future students?
Tell her “no”. Tell her if she wants to use a public facility to promote her ideological views she must allow real questions and dissenting opinions, or they’ll pass on the visit.
How much do these voucher campaign events cost? Is there some reason the public is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay federal employees to travel the country promoting private schools?
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“Of the 173 school districts in Kentucky that deal directly with students, none were represented at the table. Zero. This is interesting because the supposed intention of the event was to include stakeholders–educators, students, and parents.”
The public school representatives who were barred from attending didn’t miss anything- no one at any of these events mentions public school students anyway.
None of these efforts are FOR public school students- public school students and families are completely irrelevant to 90% of ed reform.
They can insist on attending if they demand it- they would probably win the fight to enter the room- but when they do gain entry they’ll find that nothing these people discuss applies to their students anyway, so they might want to find something more productive to do with their time.
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So extraordinarily well argued, Chiara. Thank you for keeping at this!!!
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Were there any grizzly bears around?
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The students’ excellent reporting gives the lie to Bevin’s post-event comment “The people here care about the kids. Every single person who sat around this table cares about children– not about funding, not about territory, not about power, not about politics.”
Village children are always excluded from the Emperor’s couture clothing shows: it’s well-known it was a child who first pointed out he wasn’t wearing any.
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Bevin meant to say, “We care about the kids if they go to private schools, not those in public schools.”
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The public school students are correct. Here’s the list of the “stakeholders” who were invited:
Stakeholders:
Ryan Cantrell, American Federation for Children
Andrew McNeill, Americans for Prosperity
Andrew Vandiver, Catholic Conference of Kentucky
Jim Waters, Bluegrass Institute
Charles Leis, Ed Choice Kentucky
Deana Paradis, Kentucky Association of Independent Schools
Dr. Kris Williams, chancellor, Kentucky Community and Technical College System
Aaron Thompson, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
Heather Huddleston, School Choice Kentucky
Kesia Alim Hatcher, parent
Ailiyah Alim, student
Four voucher lobbying groups were invited, but not a single person who represents public schools, families or students.
Our students and schools were completely excluded from discussion of a MASSIVE proposed federal program which is (deceptively) billed as a “public education program”
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-education-secretary-devos-touts-education-freedom-scholarships-encourages-kentucky-leaders-further-embrace-school-choice-roundtable-discussion
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Bluegrass Institute and Americans for Prosperity, courtesy of the billionaire oligarchs, the Koch’s from Kansas and NYC.
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The Catholic Conference of Kentucky- an attendee? Did Bevin and DeVos ask the representative about the Catholic Church’s institutional accountability for the widespread priest pedophilia?
The on-going investigations and legal and financial admissions of guilt juxtaposed with the church’s promotion of school privatization is sickening.
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Oh jeez. Do I have to add another item now to my sign that says “Yes I’m Catholic, sorry about the crusades and the inquisition and the priest pedophilia”?
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bethree5
The families whose sons died from injuries resulting from adult males having anal sex with the parishes’ children are suffering as are those who feel if the church had not covered up, they wouldn’t have been the hundredth or thousandth child victimized. They’ve been telling their stories with anguish.
Your response is to be glib.
People harmed by abuses in recent memory as opposed to historical horrors, touch our hearts more greatly for a reason that is unknown to you..
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I was being glib in hopes you’d back down from your broad-brush sideswipe against Catholics. You might want to consider that those of us who react tartly to this subject (perhaps including you) know it too well. My mother was victimized longterm by the Catholic that married her widowed mom [the only grandfather I knew—her memories suppressed until he died], which caused any number of relationship hurdles for me & my sibs. Knowing him as well as we did, we speculated that he was most probably victimized in his parish as a child. But my mother was a strong & positive person who brought ecumenical & Dutch & fringe-leftwing Catholicism into the family, along w/ a number of Jesuit friends from India. It’s a big church: there’s lots out there besides the secretive, puritanical tendencies of the Irish-American sect that has dominated US church politics.
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And frankly their grubbing for public $ to resurrect Catholic schools has nothing to do with it (unless you think every Catholic teacher is dangerous to kids). Reprehensible, but predictable. Obviously I’m totally against it.
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This is how the US Department of Education promotes their work:
“Betsy DeVos
DYK? Education Freedom scholarships would NOT take away money from public education. They are privately-funded scholarships by individuals for children. Want to learn more? Check out our fact sheet her”
The absolute best these public employees can offer public school families, the vast majority of families in the US, is that they will not deliberately harm public school students.
We’re supposed to pay them for that.
We really can do better than this. We really shouldn’t be expected to pay people NOT to harm 90% of students in the country. We could hire people who value our students and schools and intend to provide some positive benefit.
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“The absolute best these public employees can offer public school families, the vast majority of families in the US, is that they will not deliberately harm public school students.”
Except that in fact, diverting corporate tax revenues from state operating funds does deliberate harm to all citizens, forcing them to participate in ideological favoritism for unmonitored, privatized alternatives [many of which are crappy little religious schools] to the public schools attended by the great majority of their kids—in exchange for fewer dollars for infrastructure & effective government.
This point needs to be made over & over: ed scholarships– a voucher by any other name would smell as stinky– rob the state of general operating funds in order to prop up a wasteful enterprise. All in the name of “school choice,” a libertarian ideology that harms the public good.
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Kentucky also has a problem with the businesses organized as the Prichard Committee. They are featured in an oped today that bemoans the fact that test scores did no rise to put the state in the Top 20 by 2020 in test scores as the Prichard Committee had wanted. Having nothing to offer, the Committee is asking for a reduction of wasted time and resources on policy changes except for those it wants: proficiency in reading and math by grade three, effective teaching and “support” for that, a “meaningful high school diploma relevant to the modern economy,” every adult with a “marketable credential,” and a faster pace to all of these improvements.
Not a word about financial support and rescinding tax breaks that reduce school budgets. Not a word about the opportunities for gainful employment facing this generation or other quality of life issues in Kentucky.Source. Cincinnati Enquirer, April 22, 2019 p. 5b.
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The public universities of Louisville and Kentucky taking strings-attached Koch money, aids and abets takeover of the state’s’ democracy.
Thanks, Laura, for telling us about the Prichard Committee.
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Goals are not self fulfilling. We learned that with the NCLB mandate that every single student would score proficient by 2014.
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and almost the entire legislature so enthusiastically fell for that one
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Link to op-ed? Trying to research this committee. All I’ve come up w/so far is a staff that’s not too awful. Except for the one gal whose background is assessment & accountability for Achieve.
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“When the Secretary of Education is visiting your city, you’d think you’d have a little more of a heads up,” but no, when the Secretary of Privatization is visiting your city, you get no more than a coded whisper at midnight from her taxpayer funded, seven million dollar security team. Code for Betsy’s arrival: “The grizzly is in the henhouse.”
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Devos is practically a joke….not a very funny one. But democrats have a responsibility to keep things in perspective……is she actually accomplishing anything that comes close to the levels of harm (the one aspect of Obama’s years as president seldom mentioned by republicans) perpetrated by Arne Duncan and Bill Gates? I am willing to consider it….but keep it in perspective.
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Joe,
In two years, as you will learn in later posts today, she has given $225 million (You read that right) to one charter chain to destroy public education in El Paso, Texas. Sure, it’s only El Paso but why should this right wing ideologue have free use of $440 million a year as her play money.
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Last year, DeVos’ department also gave $10 mil. (REACH grant) to the Arnold-funded ERA center at Tulane run by Douglas Harris, who in turn divvied money out to the Arnold-funded Michigan State University EPIC center. EPIC’s state employed professors, in support of REACH’s goal, do product development and market planning for privatized education.
Tulane in Louisiana can look at the closure of the last remaining public school in New Orleans and conclude what about its part?
But, you are correct, Joe, the
privatization of America’s most important common good began with Clinton, according to and, with the help of, the Aspen Institute.
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Kentucky’s Commissioner of Education, Dr. Wayne Lewis, reportedly appointed without a search, should read Dr. Keith Benson’s paper, as should we all. “To the Black Education Reform Establishment: Be Real with Who You Are and Who’s Interest You Represent”, posted at the Ravitch blog, 2-16-2019.
The e-mail address of a Democrat on the Ky. House Education committee is Tina.Bojanowski@lrc.ky.gov
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Is there a legal group in Kentucky who takes on cases related to freedom of the press?
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I’m not familiar with a group, but Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s elected AG, has taken Bevin to task. Here’s a sample of his latest message in regards to teachers being bullied. If you listen to the short video, you’ll hear him call out Bevin, Lewis and the Secretary of the Labor Cabinet.
And, yes Linda, Lewis was appointed without a search. There’s no “reportedly” to it.
https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article229315714.html
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Thanks for the reply.
Ky Teacher, citizens who care about quality education, local control and local community survival should take a look at the state department of education employees of SETDA (an on-line site). The organization is funded by Gates. It promotes digital learning and public-private partnerships. To me it looks like ALEC only with public employees instead of elected officials. A former director stated the organization lobbies. Who are the state employees lobbying for, the “gold, silver, event and strategic partners”, the funder, Gates or, for the association of state employees?
Where does democracy fit in?
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Has Ky. Attorney General, Democrat, Andy Beshar, been contacted to review open meetings law related to the event?
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“They’re doing their job, and we’re doing our job,” Ms. Sjogren said.”
This from a school official defending the turning away of the kids. Heil?
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