Nany Bailey points out that the school bus involved in fatal injuries to several children in Chattanooga was privately owned and operated. She urges Trump and DeVos to think twice about the glories of privatization, where employees are less likely to be screened.
Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
Will Bunch, a journalist in Philadelphia, foresees disaster for his city’s public schools, which have been under siege by privatizers for a decade and are barely scraping by.
“Betsy DeVos, the right-wing billionaire school choice advocate tapped today by President-elect Donald Trump to run the U.S. Education Department, is definitely good at some things. Arguably, she’s displayed great skill in practicing the dark arts of big-money politics, using her family’s vast Amway forture to woo state legislatures through lobbying and obscure political-action committees and impose a vast empire of charter schools from Michigan to Louisiana.
“Her biggest failure, though, is a pretty huge one: Failing to do a damn thing to educate America’s children, especially in the nation’s poorest zip codes.
“Take a look at Detroit — Ground Zero for education reform in DeVos’ home state of Michigan, where the heiress has pumped millions into the political system to boost what advocates call “school choice.” The result is a broken urban school system where charter-school privateers have made big profits — aided by the failure of an charter oversight bill that the DeVos family spent $1.45 million to fight — and low student achievement has been locked in. Federal auditors discovered last year that an “unreasonably high” number of charters were among Michigan’s worst 5 percent of schools.
“Now. as Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, DeVos — with no governmental experience unless you count running the Michigan Republican Party — will be in a position to push her unregulated brand of the charter-school grift with the full force of the federal government. And public school advocates in Philadelphia are horrified.”
Read on.
Our Secretary-of-Education designate Betsy DeVos is the beneficiary of a great multi-level marketing program called Amway.
John Oliver explains here how those programs work. It is not pretty.
Amway made the DeVos family billionaires.
G.F. Brandenburg says that it is an illegal pyramid scheme.
“It’s surprising how quiet the media have been about how corrupt Amway is, the company which made Betsy DeVos rich enough to have sufficient clout to be able to ruin public education?
“Did you know that they had to pay $150 million just a few years ago? I had no idea. Going by what I wrote previously about Multi-Level Marketing (the polite name for modern pyramid schemes), the FTC and other regulatory groups treat Amway and their peers with kid gloves not because it’s not a fraud and a con, but because a lot of Senators and Representatives in both parties are beneficiaries of these Ponzi schemes. So whenever an agency tries to stop this Ponzi mess, there is immediate pushback from another branch of government.”
Read on to see how it works.
Mother Crusader (aka parent activist Darcie Cimarusti) noticed a photograph of Betsy DeVos on her Twitter account that seemed wrong. She was sitting and chatting with a student, and both of them had a box of water in front of them.
Darcie began digging, digging, digging. She finally hit pay dirt. The boxed water was branded. It was a company that is part of the DeVos portfolio. Betsy DeVos, billionaire heiress, was using her Twitter account for product placement!
Read the account of how she researched the boxes of water prominently displayed in front of DeVos and the student.
We know that Donald Trump believes that he is not bound by any ethics laws and can engage in conflicts of interest without any legal problems. But, Darcie wonders, can the Secretary of Education shill for her products too?
Two years ago, Mother Jones published a lengthy and excellent article about the DeVos family, how they became billionaires, and how they turned Michigan into a “right to work” state.
They are “the new Kochs,” determined to crush the left, especially labor unions and public education.
“THE DEVOSES sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement. Since 1970, DeVos family members have invested at least $200 million in a host of right-wing causes—think tanks, media outlets, political committees, evangelical outfits, and a string of advocacy groups. They have helped fund nearly every prominent Republican running for national office and underwritten a laundry list of conservative campaigns on issues ranging from charter schools and vouchers to anti-gay-marriage and anti-tax ballot measures. “There’s not a Republican president or presidential candidate in the last 50 years who hasn’t known the DeVoses,” says Saul Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
“Nowhere has the family made its presence felt as it has in Michigan, where it has given more than $44 million to the state party, GOP legislative committees, and Republican candidates since 1997. “It’s been a generational commitment,” Anuzis notes. “I can’t start to even think of who would’ve filled the void without the DeVoses there….”
Forbes ranks the DeVos family at #60 of the richest 400 families in America. They are noted for their generosity to Christian and conservative causes.
In selecting Betsy DeVos for the role of Education Secretary, Trump has chosen someone who looks on public schools with contempt. She will use her influence to harm public education and the teaching profession.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan released the following statement on the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education:
Kary Moss, Executive Director of the ACLU of Michigan, issued the following statement on the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education:
We strongly urge Congress to scrutinize the record of Betsy DeVos, who has been a staunch proponent of school vouchers, a misguided idea that diverts taxpayer dollars into private and parochial schools and perverts the bedrock American value of separation of church and state. She and her husband served as the primary fundraisers and engine for a Michigan ballot initiative –Kids First! Yes! Coalition that voters soundly rejected in 2000.
She has ardently supported the unlimited, unregulated growth of charter schools in Michigan, elevating for-profit schools with no consideration of the severe harm done to traditional public schools. She’s done this despite overwhelming evidence that proves that charters do no better at educating children than traditional public schools and serve only to exacerbate funding problems for cash-strapped public districts. We believe that all children have a right to a quality public education, and we fear that Betsy DeVos’ relentless advocacy of charter schools and vouchers betrays these principles.
Get to know the DeVos family. They are billionaires who are funding extremist groups and the rightwing assault on public education.
This article at Alternet describes their far-reaching power, made possible by their billions.
The family is dedicated to school privatization.
“The former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, DeVos backed a failed ballot initiative in 2000 to amend the state constitution to allow students to use taxpayer dollars to attend nonpublic schools. She heads the American Federation for Children, which was described in Political Research Associates by Rachel Tabachnick:
“The American Federation for Children is now the umbrella organization for two nonprofits that have been at the center of the pro-privatization movement for over a decade. In addition to the renamed Advocates for School Choice, it includes the Alliance for School Choice, formerly known as the Education Reform Council. Both entities received extensive funding from the late John Walton, one of the Wal-Mart heirs. The boards of the two related entities included movement leaders Betsy DeVos–scion of a Christian Right family who married into the Amway home goods fortune–William Oberndorf, Clint Bolick, John Kirtley, Steve Friess (son of Foster Friess), James Leininger, John Walton, and Cory Booker.”
if you you care about the future of public education, write your senators. Get active. Join the Network for Public Education. Write letters to the editor. Resist!
Get informed. Get involved. Speak out.
Our new Secretary-of-Education designate Betsy DeVos has an Ohio problem, writes Stephen Dyer of Progress Ohio.
“DeVos has a bad history here in Ohio. In 2006, she allowed David Brennan to launder campaign cash through her All Children Matter PAC. That led to the largest fine ever levied against a candidate or PAC by the Ohio Elections Commission — $5.2 million. By all accounts, that fine was larger than all fines put together.
DeVos is an avowed school choice champion. She has been politically active to elect pro-school choice candidates around the country. And there is little question she would continue to push for more vouchers and charter schools as Secretary.
However, there’s not a great track record with federal charter school investment. Just in Ohio, we found that about 1/3 of all the money sent to grow high-quality charters went to charters that closed shortly after receiving the federal funding, or never opened in the first place.
In all other federal grant programs, only 2% of the entities failed or failed to open.”
DeVos is an ideologue and extremist. She will destroy public education in four years as Secretary. She might be ignored as a garden-variety crank except for the fact that she is a billionaire and her family gives millions to Republican candidates and to their favorite conservative causes. The Republican senators will fawn on her at her hearings. Will the Democratic candidates stand up for public education and fight her nomination?
Here are some suggested readings from the BATS:
Here are some pieces you can read about DeVos. She is NO friend to public education and has been attacking public education in Michigan for over a decade.
Here is what the teachers of Michigan say: http://www.mea.org/aft-michigan-and-mea-presidents-respond-selection-betsy-devos-us-secretary-education
Chalkbeat reports what you should know about DeVos: https://medium.com/@Chalkbeat/what-you-should-know-about-betsy-devos-trumps-education-secretary-pick-and-what-her-choice-7990d856318#.i1svfc7a1
Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/23/trump-nominates-true-enemy-public-schools-education-secretary
We cannot retreat in despair. DeVos as Secretary of Education is NOT good news for public education but we must show the children and their families that we will fight for them. In the weeks to come the BATs Board of Directors will be in discussions about how we continue and amp up our fight to save public education and to create strong sustainable public schools for all children. We cannot fight without your support. So, please consider donating to BATs at our website http://www.badassteacher.org/ – you can give a one-time donation or become a $10 a month subscriber. We need YOU to help US fight for public education.
In Solidarity,
The BATs Board of Directors
Diane Ravitch's blog 