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Betsy DeVos: In Her Own Words

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2016 //
36

What does Betsy DeVos say about education? What does she care about? What matters most? Charters and vouchers. The charter chain that she praises in this video operates for profit. As the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press recently wrote, she is a lobbyist for privatized alternatives to public schools. She doesn’t care for public schools. She doesn’t like them.
TRANSCRIPT Betsy DeVos Interview w Edward J. Pozzuolli

 

VIDEO:
Betsy DeVos of the American Federation for Children
Published on Aug 6, 2015
Ed Pozzuoli, President of Fort Lauderdale based law firm Tripp Scott, sits down with Betsy DeVos, Chairman of the American Federation for Children, to discuss the school choice movement.

 

00:11
INTRO (by Ed Pozzuolli INTERVIEWER):
Good evening and welcome this is Ed Pozzuolli president of Tripp Scott and with me today, I’m so honored, Betsy DeVos. Betsy, welcome.
Betsy DeVos:
Thank you Ed.
INTERVIEWER:
Betsy is the chairman of the American Federation of Children, and is a true Pioneer, and when I say Pioneer, I mean it in the in the real sense of the ‘School Choice Movement’ across the country.

 

First QUESTION by Ed Pozzuolli):
I know you’ve given time, and energy, and money, and strategic advice, and all those great things, and so given that you’re ‘The Pioneer’, where does the ‘School Choice Movement’ stand in the United States?

 

00:42
Betsy DeVos
Well, first of all Ed, thanks for having me here today, and it’s really an honor to be here.

 

So ‘Education (School) Choice’ has made some tremendous strides in the last 3 or 4 years. Now there are 24 States, currently, that have some form of a private school choice program, “Education Choice Program’. And we… We (American Federation for Children & allied organizations) advocate for, and do the politics around, um… all forms of choice. So we believe that parents, and we target programs that are specifically geared to answer the needs of low-income parents and students, we believe that they should have the full range of choices.

 

QUESTION by INTERVIEWER:
So what are they? Give our audience a…
01:24
Betsy DeVos:
Well, starting with private schools, which is probably the most difficult form to get too, politically in people’s minds, Charter Schools, On-line Schools, Virtual Schools, Blended Learning, um… any, any combination thereof, and frankly any, you know, any combination, or any kind of choice that hasn’t yet been thought of. Um. Education Savings Accounts (ALEC), that’s a new one as well. Ah… we, we change policy through political effort to elect or defeat candidates in States based on this issue… their support, or lack of support, for the issue. Then we work on the policies, the legislation, the actual programs that they would consider, and we advocate (READ “lobby”) to get those passed in those legislatures, and with the governors. Once they’re passed, we help to get help parents and kids to find schools, and schools to find parents and kids.

 

02:19
QUESTION by INTERVIEWER: So, not only do you with the politics in the legislation, you also help the actual parents with the opportunities that now are available.
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly, exactly. Because so often, especially low-income parents we have to use different ways to inform them, or make them aware of these opportunities,
INTERVIEWER: Right.
Betsy DeVos:
…and help them with the application process, um… because most of them are means-tested, help them with finding the resources to be able to make the application, and, and really just helping the programs to be successful. Indiana’s a really great example.
INTERVIEWER: Great example..
Betsy DeVos:
You know this is only, I think, the third or fourth year of the program it’s already the largest voucher program in the country…
INTERVIEWER: Yep.
Betsy DeVos:
…and the demand is huge, not enough, not all of the parents and the students that apply are able to get into the program every year. So there’s gonna (going to be) a demand for more providers, more schools, more opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators, and creators to come in, and start new ways of approaching education.

 

03:23
INTERVIEWER:
So in Indiana does the voucher program, but just to give our reviewers an understanding, lower-income families are also now have the choice of charter schools….
Betsy DeVos: Absolutely.
INTERVIEWER:
They also have the choice in the turnaround schools in Indiana.
Betsy DeVos: Yep.
INTERVIEWER:
And as well as the normal traditional public schools which are now having to compete with these other options.
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly, exactly.

03:43
QUESTION by INTERVIEWER:
What… are we still be seeing results? We’re looking at results-oriented for the benefit of the child, are we seeing that?
Betsy DeVos:
I… We definitely ARE seeing the results. And you know so many people get focused on school buildings, and the results of buildings, (REF to testing and evaluation systems in MI???) and I encourage them to really look at each individual child, cuz (because) that’s what we’re really concerned about. Right? How much is one kid learning, or what how much is one kid getting turned on to new opportunities, and new things that they haven’t um.. even been introduced to previously.

 

04:13
INTERVIEWER:
Now I know that you are in Florida is a, a dear spot in your heart…
Betsy DeVos: Yeah… (Dick & Betsy DeVos have at least one home in Florida in Vero Beach).
INTERVIEWER:
.. you live here, and so tell us a little bit about what’s going on in Florida, and some of the developments in the ‘School Choice Movement’ here.

 

04:26
Betsy DeVos:
Well, Florida I always cite Florida as really the farthest along, in terms of providing the widest range of choices, and the greatest access to those choices, of any state in the country. And from a political standpoint, having real bipartisan support for these choices. Because today, and I will, ya know, cite the very successful ‘Tax Credit Scholarship Program’ (vouchers) with over 70,000 children participating this year. Um, that program however, is under attack by those who are defenders of the ‘status quo’, and that will have to be litigated. But we’re very confident that as that program, and all the choices in Florida continue to grow, and as more students find success because of those choices, the constituency for ‘choices’, the full range, is going to continue to be very strong, and grow even stronger.

 

05:16
INTERVIEWER:
So those opportunities, explain to our viewers what that is.
Betsy DeVos:
The ‘Tax Credit Opportunity Scholarship’ is a tax credit against corporate taxes in the State of Florida. So if you have a business that pays Florida state corporate taxes, you can redesignate up to, I believe it’s 75%, of your corporate tax burden to the state annually into a ‘scholarship fund’. That scholarship fund then, is ‘vouchered out’, or giving out in, in incremental amounts to low-income students, and their families, to choose the school, or education setting, that’s gonna (going to) work best for them.

 

05:57
INTERVIEWER:
So then the child and their family can use the voucher and attend a private school…
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly.
INTERVIEWER:
…or parochial school or whatever…
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly.
INTERVIEWER:
And so since there are no ‘state monies’ involved it all essentially all ‘private monies’ with the ‘tax credit’ method.
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly. Exactly because those funds never go into the state coffers to begin with.

 

06:13
INTERVIEWER:
So for some of our ‘corporate partners’ who will watch this….
Betsy DeVos:
It’s a great opportunity… ABSOLUTELY it is (Betsy with a big smile).

 

06:19-06:23
INTERVIEWER:
Talk a little bit about in Florida the ‘charter school movement’, because that’s another element of ‘choice’ in Florida.
Betsy DeVos:
Well, the ‘Charter School Movement’ in Florida continues to be strong and grow even stronger. And ah,
INTERVIEWER:
By a quarter million kids…
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly. ‘Charter Schools USA’ (EMO), great provider of, of, of great opportunities for kids. Having visited one with Jon (Jonathan) and Sherry Hage (Founders of Charter Schools USA) not too long ago, (I’m) very impressed with ah, the approach to learning, to education, there. And, ah, charter schools are a very vibrant option and opportunity for parents in Florida too.

 

06:53
INTERVIEWER:
I think that’s true, and so what do you think the future of the ‘Choice Movement’ is in the United States?
06:59
Betsy DeVos:
I think as more and more parents realize that.. um.. their children’s future opportunities really are tied directly to the ability of each of their children to grow, and develop to their fullest potential, in other words get a good education, they are gonna (going to) become more demanding of that opportunity, of wider opportunities, because there are far too many.. um.. educational settings that just aren’t meeting the needs of all of the… all of today’s kids. And we think about the system that most kids are attending today the ‘traditional public schools’, and it’s a system that was brought to us two hundred years ago, by the Prussians, a very much an ‘industrial, factory model’ of education, and how much our society has changed today.
INTERVIEWER:
Right.
Betsy DeVos:
Technology has brought so many new opportunities, and we need to embrace that, and not only embrace it, but be bold about it, and allow people who are innovative and creative to come and help us think differently about how we could do education.

 

08:04
INTERVIEWER:
And so the ‘Choice Movement’ is truly what they called ‘disruptor’ in a certain sense….
Betsy DeVos:
It is indeed, it is indeed… (Betsy calls herself a “disruptor”). And the more of a ‘marketplace’ we have for education, the more, I think, the better.. um.. in general, kids are going to do educationally, and certainly the better individually, kids are going to be able to do.

 

08:23
INTERVIEWER:
And ultimately that’s the key…
Betsy DeVos:
And that is the key.

 

08:26
INTERVIEWER:
Well with that Betsy, I really do I want to take this opportunity and thank you again for your great work in this area and providing unbelievable ‘Educational Choice’ across the country, particularly for those who need it most, and so thank you.
Betsy DeVos:
Thank you Ed, thank you..

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

John Thompson: We Can’t Let Betsy DeVos Destroy Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
19

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma.

 

 

As the Daily Oklahoman’s Ben Felder explains, “Education savings accounts (ESAs) and vouchers have not been easy sells, including in the GOP-controlled Oklahoma Legislature.” Until this November, the same argument which defeated vouchers last year would have seemed to be persuasive. Our schools have been clobbered by a 27% decrease in per-student funding and they can’t stand a further reduction. Even a month ago, a grassroots coalition of educators and families appeared ready to send more teachers to the legislature, and to pass SQ 779, which would have raised teachers’ wages.

 

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-school-voucher-advocates-see-a-political-opening/article/5529475

 

Then a well-funded and false advertising campaign helped derail the teacher raise, and Betsy DeVos’ the American Federation for Children, “spent nearly $170,000 in Oklahoma campaigns this year, often in opposition to public school teachers who were also running.” So, Felder now reports, “last month’s election results on both the national and state level have some school choice advocates seeing a political opening.” He cites Republican Sen. Kyle Loveless, “‘There is definitely going to be some movement on education savings accounts this next year in Oklahoma … Last year we were a couple of votes short in the Senate but I think we picked those seats up this year.'”

 

In addition to American Federation of Children’s money, a series of Indiana corporate reformers have repeatedly come to Oklahoma and pushed the DeVos/Trump/Pence agenda. So, it is doubly important that Oklahoma legislators, like their counterparts across the nation, become aware of what former Gov. Mike Pence and the $1.3 million that DeVos and her political action committee poured into Indiana have bought – and at what price.

 

Chalkbeat Indiana’s Nicholas Garcia, in “Six Things to Know about Indiana’s School Voucher Program, A Possible Model for Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos,” explains that “the number of students using vouchers rose from 3,911 in 2011, when the program launched, to 32,686 in 2016.” Originally, vouchers were pushed as a way to help poor students in failing schools, but “a growing portion of Indiana voucher users are from middle-class families, and growth has been greatest among suburban families.” Now, “60 percent of Indiana voucher users are white, and about 31 percent are from middle-income families — not exactly the student population that struggles most in the state’s schools.”

 

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/11/30/six-things-to-know-about-indianas-school-voucher-program-a-possible-model-for-betsy-devos/

 

Even more disturbing is the way that vouchers have grown into a greater threat to the financial stability of schools, “In 2011, just 9 percent of voucher users had never before gone to public school, Chalkbeat reports, “That was true for more than half of students using vouchers in 2016. So, Indiana isn’t offering an escape from failing schools but a subsidy for many who would never attend a public school.

 

Moreover, researchers at Notre Dame University conducted a long-term study which found that “students who switched from traditional public schools to Catholic schools actually did worse in math.” They also increase student mobility which undermines student performance.

 

Of course, student performance outcomes aren’t the outcomes that motivate many voucher advocates. DeVos has said that her goal is not to “stay in our own faith territory,” but to “advance God’s Kingdom.” As Politico’s Benjamin Wermund reports, DeVos sees school choice as a path to “greater Kingdom gain.”

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-education-trump-religion-232150

 

Given the importance of religious issues in the voucher fights, an analysis by Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer is timely. She found that, “Pence’s voucher program ballooned into a $135 million annual bonanza almost exclusively benefiting private religious schools–ranging from those teaching the Koran to Christian schools teaching creationism and the Bible as literal truth–at the expense of regular and usually better-performing public schools.”

 

Mencimer looked into the 316 schools receiving vouchers and she could only find four that weren’t religious. However, she found curricula that teaches creationism and Biblical stories and parables as literally true. Mencimer learned:

 

Among the more popular textbooks are some from Bob Jones University that are known for teaching that humans and dinosaurs existed on the Earth at the same time and that dragons were real. BJU textbooks have also promoted a positive view of the KKK, writing in one book, “the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies.”

 

Moreover, Mother Jones cites a young Muslim student who attended a voucher school for about eight weeks, “as he bounced around several schools on his way to becoming radicalized. In September, he was indicted for providing material support to terrorists after allegedly trying to join ISIS.”

 

Mother Jones further describes the deplorable student performance of many voucher schools. In 2015, less than 9 percent of the students at a Horizon Christian Academy campus passed the state standardized tests in math and English. And it adds telling details to the Chalkbeat Indiana’s narrative. Mother Jones found:

 

Some of the fastest growth in voucher use has occurred in some of the state’s most affluent suburbs. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based think tank, recently concluded that because white children’s participation in the voucher program dwarfed the next largest racial group by 44 points, the vouchers were effectively helping to resegregate public schools.

 

It’s bad enough that Trump seeks billions of dollars to fund vouchers. But, especially in poor states and districts, the DeVos/Trump/Pence policy could be worse than anything previously imagined. Not all states and school districts that have been targeted by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos are as vulnerable as those in Oklahoma, but as a recent NPR report explains, there are plenty of other systems that are already overwhelmed.

 

KOSU’s Emily Wendler and WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, in “Public School Funding at a Loss, in Oklahoma and Elsewhere,” started a national tour of under-funded and challenged school systems to first answer the question “How Low Can a State Go?” and still educate its kids. Second, it asks what effect DeVos will have on these underfunded systems.

 

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/11/30/oklahoma-schools-four-day-weeks

 

Other states have taken the route pioneered by Kansas, Michigan, and Oklahoma and deliberately starve their governmental services. This new voucher campaign, combined with public and private charters, and virtual schools could push many of those states across a “tipping point,” and creating new lows in public schooling, constitutional democracy, and common decency.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Vouchers

ExxonMobil CEO–Likely Secretary of State–❤️ Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2016 //
8

The latest reports say that Trump is likely to appoint ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.

 

His first qualification, from Trump’s point of view, is that he has no government experience whatever. He has spent the past 41 years working at ExxonMobil. He also has no diplomatic experience. That makes him just right for the Trump cabinet, where knowledge and experience are seen as handicaps.

 

His second qualification is that he has a long and apparently close relationship with Trump’s friend Vladimir Putin. He was doing billions of dollars of business with the Russian oligarch and opposed the economic sanctions on Russia after it invaded Crimea.

 

But, from a Trumpian perspective, Tillerson has one defect: He was the leading advocate for the Common Core in the corporate world. He sold it as the sine qua non for the future of the nation, which of course was nonsense, but he believed it.

 

Well, Trump has Betsy DeVos, who used to support Common Core but stopped when Trump asked her.

 

They could switch jobs and it wouldn’t matter, since neither is qualified.

 

Want to read more about Rex and the Common Core?

Why Is Exxon Mobil So Aggressive in Promoting Common Core?


http://truthinamericaneducation.com/common-core-state-standards/an-implied-threat-to-remove-exxon-mobil-from-states-that-refuse-common-core/

 

When Exxon Mobil, GE, Intel, and others pushed for the education standards, they incurred the wrath of Tea Party conservatives and got a painful lesson in modern politics.
http://fortune.com/common-core-standards/

 

CFR CEO Speaker Series: A Conversation with Rex W. Tillerson

 

http://www.cfr.org/world/ceo-speaker-series-conversation-rex-w-tillerson/p35286

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Common Core, Trump

Betsy DeVos Gave Trump $1.8 Million for Campaign

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2016 //
37

Newly elected presidents often reward big donors an ambassadorship. Thanks for your $3 million, how about the ambassadorship to Sweden? Too cold? How about Jamaica?

 

But Donald Trump has given major posts to six of his big donors.

 

One of them them is Betsy DeVos, who gave $1.8 million.

 

The fact that most of his cabinet consists of generals and billionaires can only be seen as his love of winners. Winners like him.

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Trump

Politico: Michigan is a Horrible Model for U.S. Education

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2016 //
19

Caitlin Emma, Benjamin Wermund, and Kimberly Hefling, staff writers at politico.com, took a close look at Michigan and answered the question, what hath Betsy DeVos’s obsession with choice done to the schools of Michigan?

 

Unless you are a choice fanatic like DeVos, the answer is not encouraging.

 

Despite two decades of charter-school growth, the state’s overall academic progress has failed to keep pace with other states: Michigan ranks near the bottom for fourth- and eighth-grade math and fourth-grade reading on a nationally representative test, nicknamed the “Nation’s Report Card.” Notably, the state’s charter schools scored worse on that test than their traditional public-school counterparts, according to an analysis of federal data.

 

Critics say Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude about charter-school regulation has led to marginal and, in some cases, terrible schools in the state’s poorest communities as part of a system dominated by for-profit operators. Charter-school growth has also weakened the finances and enrollment of traditional public-school districts like Detroit’s, at a time when many communities are still recovering from the economic downturn that hit Michigan’s auto industry particularly hard.

 

The results in Michigan are so disappointing that even some supporters of school choice are critical of the state’s policies.

 

“The bottom line should be, ‘Are kids achieving better or worse because of this expansion of choice?’” said Michigan State Board of Education President John Austin, a DeVos critic who also describes himself as a strong charter-school supporter. “It’s destroying learning outcomes … and the DeVoses were a principal agent of that.”

 

The links are in the article, as well as a puzzle. Check out the link to CREDO at Stanford (funded by the Walton Foundation), which issued a report on Michigan charters and praised them extensively. How does the CREDO finding make sense to Michigan’s low standing on the National Assessment of Education Progress? How does it make sense in light of the fact that Detroit is the worst-performing urban district tested by NAEP?

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Michigan, NAEP, Privatization, Testing

Andre Perry: Reformers Should Not Criticize Trump When They Support His Policies

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2016 //
19

Andre Perry was one of the earliest charter school leaders in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and one of the few leaders of color. He became disillusioned with some parts of the reforms, especially the marginalization of local community voices.

 

In this article, he calls out reformers who feel they must distance themselves from Trump because of his comments that stirred racism. Perry said the same reformers are quietly pleased that the incoming administration will enlarge and enrich the charter sector.

 

He writes:

 

“Playing the politics of niceness has never been so convenient for the Dems of education reform. DeVos’s belief in limited state oversight, for-profit charter management and vouchers didn’t give Democrat proponents of charter schools any pause in the past. And for many it doesn’t now.
“As the chief architect of education reform in Michigan, DeVos should take blame for doing no favors to struggling public schools in Detroit and the rest of the state. Michigan is a prime example of what not to do in education reform. Her failing creation of a wide-open market is a case study in why there should be limits on school choice.

 

“However, the inability of reform-leaning Democrats to renounce DeVos and her policies in the past reveals a complicity in her nomination. Authentic Democratic notions of accountability simply don’t jibe with Republican ideals of choice. You also don’t have to be cozy with your opponents to accomplish your policy goals. But for the reward of charter schools, certain Democrats have abandoned their party’s principles and muzzled their opposition to Republican policies in education and beyond.

 

“Young people don’t live wholly in schools; they live in communities. If Democrat reformers want children to live in nurturing communities and not just charter schools, they must move beyond myopic quid pro quo politics.

 

“Democrats can no longer afford to wittingly miss the forest for the charter school trees.
“Will Dems fight voucher policies, which have been shown to be largely ineffective, and harmful in some cases, to an extent that makes the Secretary uncomfortable? Will Dems push for the kind of accountability that would put a moratorium on the loose and deleterious system of charters in DeVos’ home state of Michigan?
“I look forward to Democrats divorcing themselves from a relationship of convenience with Republicans, who have elevated what a school choice proponent really looks like in DeVos. Real dissent from Democrats should equate to aggressively limiting DeVos’s policies, which have included restricting state oversight, promoting for-profit charter management organizations and encouraging vouchers for private schools including those that are faith-based.
“Philosophically, Democrats shouldn’t believe in this kind of school choice.”

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Detroit Free Press: DeVos and Her War on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2016 //
12

 

Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press and a parent of children in a Detroit charter school, wrote a scathing critique of Betsy DeVos and her lack of qualifications to be Secretary of Education. He called his article “Betsy DeVos and the Twilight of Public Education.”

 

She is not an educator nor does she have relevant experience, he says. She is a lobbyist for school choice. The chaotic mess in Detroit is her handiwork. The city has many charter schools, and they are no better than public schools.

 

Thanks to her zealous lobbying, he says, Michigan tolerates more low-performing charters that just about any other state.

 

He writes:

 

“In Detroit, parents of school-age children have plenty of choices, thanks to the nation’s largest urban network of charter schools.

 

“What remains in short supply is quality.

 

“In Brightmoor, the only high school left is Detroit Community Schools, a charter boasting more than a decade of abysmal test scores and, until recently, a superintendent who earned $130,000 a year despite a dearth of educational experience or credentials.

 

“On the west side, another charter school, Hope Academy, has been serving the community around Grand River and Livernois for 20 years. Its test scores have been among the lowest in the state throughout those two decades; in 2013 the school ranked in the first percentile, the absolute bottom for academic performance. Two years later, its charter was renewed.

 

“Or if you live downtown, you could try Woodward Academy, a charter that has limped along near the bottom of school achievement since 1998, while its operator has been allowed to expand into other communities.

 

“For students enrolled in schools of choice — that is, schools in nearby districts who have opened their doors to children who live outside district boundaries — it’s not much better. Kids who depend on Detroit’s problematic public transit are are too far away from the state’s top-performing school districts — and most of those districts don’t participate in the schools of choice program, anyway.

 

“This deeply dysfunctional educational landscape — where failure is rewarded with opportunities for expansion and “choice” means the opposite for tens of thousands of children — is no accident. It was created by an ideological lobby that has zealously championed free-market education reform for decades, with little regard for the outcome.

 

“And at the center of that lobby is Betsy DeVos, the west Michigan advocate whose family has contributed millions of dollars to the cause of school choice and unregulated charter expansion throughout Michigan….

 

“The results of this free-for-all have been tragic for Michigan children, and especially for those in Detroit, where 79% of the state’s charters are located…

 

“The most accurate assessment is that charter schools have simply created a second, privately managed failing system. Yes, there are high-performing outliers — a little more than 10% of the charter schools perform in the top tier. But in Detroit, the best schools are as likely to be traditional public schools.

 

“DeVos and her family have not been daunted by these outcomes. It’s as if the reams of data showing just incremental progress or abysmal failure don’t matter. Their belief in charter schools is unshakable, their resistance to systematic reforms that would improve both public and charter schools unyielding.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Mother Jones: Mike Pence’s Voucher Program for Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2016 //
73

Indiana has one of the most expansive voucher programs in the nation, even though the state constitution explicitly forbids spending public money for religious schools. The state courts decided that the constitution doesn’t mean what it says. Former Governor Mitch Daniels initiated the voucher program and Mike Pence expanded it. Although born a Catholic, Pence is now an evangelical Christian.

 

Mother Jones investigated the Indiana voucher program and found that it has been a boon for religious schools, including many that teach creationism. Student performance in the voucher schools is poor; maybe someday the state will realize that it has to save kids who are failing to learn in mediocre voucher schools.

 

“One of Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s pet projects as governor of Indiana was expanding school choice vouchers, which allow public money to pay for private school tuition. President-elect Donald Trump has said he’d like to expand such vouchers in the rest of the country, but what happened in Indiana should serve as a cautionary tale for Trump and his administration.

 

“Pence’s voucher program ballooned into a $135 million annual bonanza almost exclusively benefiting private religious schools—ranging from those teaching the Koran to Christian schools teaching creationism and the Bible as literal truth—at the expense of regular and usually better-performing public schools. Indeed, one of the schools was a madrasa, an Islamic religious school, briefly attended by a young man arrested this summer for trying to join ISIS—just the kind of place Trump’s coalition would find abhorrent.

 

“In Indiana, Pence created one of the largest publicly funded voucher programs in the country. Initially launched in 2011 under Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, it was sold as a way to give poor, minority children trapped in bad public schools a way out. “Social justice has come to Indiana education,” Daniels declared after the voucher legislation passed. It was supposed to be a small program, initially capped at 7,500 vouchers. Full vouchers, worth 90 percent of the per-pupil spending in a school district, were reserved for families with incomes up to 100 percent of the cutoff for free or reduced-price school lunch, about $45,000 a year for a family of four.

 

“But in 2013, Pence and the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature raised the income limits on the program so that a family of four with up to $90,000 in annual income became eligible for vouchers covering half their private school tuition. They also removed most requirements that students come from a public school to access the vouchers, making families already attending private school eligible for tuition subsidies, thus removing any pretense that the vouchers were a tool to help poor children escape failing schools.

 

“Pence’s school choice experiment demonstrates that vouchers can create a host of thorny political problems and potential church- and-state issues.

 
“By the 2015-16 school year, the number of students using state-funded vouchers had shot up to more than 32,000 in 316 private schools. But Pence’s school choice experiment demonstrates that vouchers can create a host of thorny political problems and potential church-and-state issues. Almost every single one of these voucher schools is religious. The state Department of Education can’t tell parents which or even whether any of the voucher schools are secular. (A state spokeswoman told me Indiana doesn’t collect data on the school’s religious affiliation.) Out of the list of more than 300 schools, I could find only four that weren’t overtly religious and, of those, one was solely for students with Asperger’s syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders, and the other is an alternative school for at-risk students.

 

“Opponents, including public school teachers and local clergy, sued the state to try to block the voucher program in 2011, arguing that it clearly violated the state constitutional provisions that protect taxpayers from having to support religion. They were also concerned that the money going to the religious schools was coming directly from local public school systems, draining them of critical funding in violation of the state constitution. But the Indiana state Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that the voucher program was constitutional because public money was going to the students and not to religious institutions directly….

 

“Perhaps not surprisingly, the kids in these schools aren’t performing very well on the state’s standardized tests, putting voucher schools among the state’s worst-performing schools. The three campuses of Horizon Christian Academy rank near the bottom. Two of its schools were once for-profit charter schools that lost their charters because they were badly underperforming. They reconstituted as private religious schools and now take taxpayer-funded vouchers. In 2015, less than 9 percent of the students at one of the Horizon campuses passed the state standardized tests in math and English, a rate worse than most of the state’s public schools from which the vouchers were supposed to provide an escape.

 

“A study by researchers at Notre Dame University published last year shows that in the first three years of the program, Indiana kids who left public schools to attend voucher schools saw their math scores decline in comparison with their peers who remained in regular public schools. The public school students saw improvements in their English skills, but the voucher kids’ results stayed flat. The voucher schools can’t necessarily blame low test scores on poverty, either. According to data from the state, today more than 60 percent of the voucher students in Indiana are white, and more than half of them have never even attended any public school, much less a failing one. Some of the fastest growth in voucher use has occurred in some of the state’s most affluent suburbs. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based think tank, recently concluded that because white children’s participation in the voucher program dwarfed the next largest racial group by 44 points, the vouchers were effectively helping to resegregate public schools.”

 

This is what is in store for the nation in the Trump-Pence era.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Mike Pence, Privatization, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Betsy DeVos on Video Explains How to Turn Corporate Taxes into Vouchers

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2016 //
8

The Nevada state constitution contains this language:

 

Article 11, Section 10: “No public funds of any kind or character whatever, State, County or Municipal, shall be used for sectarian purpose.”

 

Mercedes Schneider explains how the Nevada Supreme Court did a fancy rhetorical two-step to conclude that the state constitution does not forbid vouchers, it just forbids funding them. Got that?

 

She then shows a video of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, telling a Florida lawyer how corporate taxes can be used to provide vouchers for use in any school, including religious schools. This, despite the fact that the Florida state constitution explicitly says in Article 1, Section 3:

 

“There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

 

This, despite the fact that the voters of Florida rejected an effort to change this portion of the Florida state constitution to allow vouchers for religious schools in 2012. The so-called “Religious Freedom Amendment” was voted down by 55-44%.

 

US Secretary of Education nominee and “true pioneer of the school choice movement across the country,” Betsy DeVos, explains how the educational tax credit enables what would be public money (collected in the form of corporate taxes) from becoming public money at minute 4:45 in the 2015 Youtube video below in which Edward Pozzuoli, the president of Florida-based Tripp Scott Law Firm, interviews then-American Federation for Children (AFC) Chair DeVos, about tax credits.

 

The entire 9-minute video is an eye opener; DeVos talks about how the AFC does it all: finds the school choice candidates (she’s particularly keen on private school choice); puts “political effort” behind electing/defeating candidates; “works on the policies… the actual legislation,” and “helps parents and kids to find schools and schools to find parents and kids.”

 

“Reformers” intent on replacing public schools with for-profit charters and religious schools don’t let a little thing like the state constitution get in their way. Conservatives used to call themselves “strict constructionists” when it came to the federal or state constitution. They insisted on abiding by the original intent of those who wrote the constitution. It turns out now that they believe quite the opposite and are ready to reinterpret the clear language of state constitutions to achieve their goal of privatization.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Florida, Nevada, Vouchers

Mitchell Robinson: How Betsy and Dick DeVos Devoured the Schools of Michigan

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2016 //
14

In this post, Mitchell Robinson lays out the strategy of Betsy and Dick DeVos in Michigan, which they have since exported to other states in their well-funded campaign to destroy public education and substitute for it a marketplace of for-profit charters and publicly-funded religious schools.

 

Robinson, a professor of music education at Michigan State, writes:

 

 

“As Michiganders know, Betsy and Dick DeVos are religious and school privatization/choice/voucher zealots. They were humiliated by the twin failures of voucher legislation in 2000 and Dick’s loss in the Michigan governor’s race to Jennifer Granholm in 2006, and these dual humiliations resulted in the development of the DeVos’ “long-game” strategy to achieve their goals of privatizing public education:

 

*destroy the Democrats’ biggest single source of financial support by gutting teacher unions via Right to Work legislation
*capitalize on the elimination of the charter school “cap” to explode the number of non-regulated and for-profit charter schools in the state
*use charter schools as the mechanism to “blur the lines” between public and private/religious schools
use this “blurring” of boundaries between church and state to build public support for the redistribution of public funds to religious and private schools”

 

In the timeline that Robinson created, he includes the infamous secret video of Dick DeVos speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2002.

 

He writes:

 

“One of my first encounters with the DeVos ideology of education was stumbling upon this video of a speech that Amway heir Dick DeVos (husband of Betsy, brother-in-law of Blackwater private mercenary army founder Eric Prince, Betsy’s brother), gave on December 3, 2002, at the Heritage Foundation (which is funded generously by the DeVos family foundations). The gist of this speech was Mr. DeVos’ argument that school privatization was an issue that was deeply divisive, and not at all popular with the public; so in order to get vouchers and privatization through the legislature a “stealth approach” was necessary: “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities.”

 

At least we know where she stands. She is not neutral among the different sectors of K-12 education. She doesn’t like public schools. She wants unregulated competition among charters and religious schools, all funded by taxpayers.

 

A few years back, I visited Michigan and spoke to a group of district superintendents who collectively represented about half the students in the state. They described Michigan’s public school choice program, which obliterated district lines. Students could go to any public school, taking their dollars with them. Every district competed with every other district to lure students because total revenues rose or fell based on enrollments. Each district spent about $100,000 a year on radio and TV advertising, trying to “poach” students from neighboring districts. No one liked this approach. No one thought it was educationally sound. It was a colossal waste of money. Add to this the competition with charters, most of which operate for profit, and you have a state school system focused on dollars as the bottom line, not students or education.

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization, Vouchers
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