Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
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Florida: 2 Big Banks Abandon Florida’s Voucher Program Due to Anti-LGBT Policies

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2020 //
20

A free press makes a difference. Here is proof.

On January 23, Leslie Postal and Annie Martin of the Orlando Sentinel wrote that nearly 160 religious schools receiving vouchers from the state of Florida openly discriminate against students, families, and staff who are gay. Voucher schools drain $1 billion away from public education every year in Florida, and state legislators want to expand vouchers until they are available to every student in the state.

The next day, opinion writer Scott Maxwell of the same newspaper wrote more about public-funded religious  schools rejecting students and families. He wrote:

One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.

The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

On January 28, the Orlando Sentinel wrote an editorial criticizing the major corporations that declare their opposition to discrimination yet have poured millions into support of Florida’s discriminatory voucher program. Ouch! Profits or principles? The editorial writer reviewed the list of major corporations that support the voucher programs while declaring their opposition to bias.

The first corporation that announced it would no longer subsidize bigotry was Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank.

Then Wells Fargo dropped out.

Valerie Strauss wrote about the defections here.

Others have pulled out, including Wyndham Hotels, Allegiant Airlines and Rosen Hotels. Most corporations don’t stop and think and realize that every dollar that goes to an unregulated, unaccountable religious school is taken away from the state’s underfunded public schools. 

There may be other defectors. The defections may only be temporary.

Vouchers open the way to a slippery slope.

The Supreme Court may decide, if asked, that a school may ban the child of gay parents if its religious beliefs dictate the child’s exclusion. After all, it previously decided, with its two Trump appointees, that a baker could refuse to sell his cake to a gay couple.

That’s what Betsy DeVos has spent her life advancing: a world in which one’s religious beliefs trump others’ civil rights.

Today the target is gays. Who will it be next time? African-Americans? Jews? Muslims?

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Florida, Religion, Vouchers

Trump Picks DeVos as Surrogate for His Campaign

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2020 //
43

Politico Morning Education writes that Trump has chosen billionaire Betsy DeVos as a campaign surrogate, despite the fact that she is the most disliked member of his Cabinet. No doubt he hopes for DeVos campaign money but also wants to stick his thumb in the eye of teachers and supporters of public schools. DeVos campions charter schools and vouchers. She despises public schools.

DEVOS HITS THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Long a target for the left and protesters, DeVos is being deployed as a political asset for Trump. She will be among more than 80 surrogates campaigning for him at caucus locations across Iowa on Feb. 3, the campaign announced. Two days later, she’ll be with Vice President Mike Pence and senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway on Feb. 5 at a “Women for Trump” event in Camp Hill, Pa.

— Joining DeVos in the Hawkeye state will be several other agency heads, governors, and members of Congress and the state legislature, along with other campaign officials and advisers. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. will also be on hand for what the campaign is calling an “unprecedented” surrogate operation.

— “This will be the strongest, best funded, and most organized presidential campaign in history,” said Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager. “We are putting the Democrats on notice — good luck trying to keep up with this formidable reelection machine.”

— DeVos visited Iowa in March for a closed-door meeting in the state Capitol to pitch her proposal for Education Freedom Scholarships. Iowa Democrats at the time blasted the plan, saying it would undermine public education, the Des Moines Register reported, and the proposal hasn’t gotten traction on Capitol Hill.

— Iowa has a tax credit scholarship program, but it’s not considered a school choice leader. Its charter school law is considered weak, ranking in the bottom five of state laws for accountability, flexibility, funding equity and other metrics, according to a new report by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

HAPPENING TODAY: DeVos will join Pence in delivering remarks at the Wisconsin School Choice Student Showcase in celebration of National School Choice Week.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, Vouchers

AFT Sues Betsy DeVos for Failing to Protect Defrauded Students

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2020 //
7

Forbes’ education writer Wesley Whistle writes about the lawsuit filed by AFT against Betsy DeVos for her failure to protect the students who were defrauded by colleges and universities, mostly for-profit.

DeVos rolled back an Obama-era regulation intended to prevent colleges from loading students with high debts and worthless degrees.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has one more lawsuit to deal with this week. Yesterday, one of the largest teachers unions in the country filed suit against DeVos and the Department of Education (Department). The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is suing DeVos for repealing the “gainful employment” regulation that is meant to protect student borrowers from programs that load them up with debt that doesn’t yield a job with an income sufficient to repay their student loans.

The complaint from AFT—filed by the National Student Legal Defense Network (NSLDN)—says the repeal of the rule was illegal and didn’t provide the proper justification required in federal rulemaking. The lawsuit asks the court to reinstate the rule to protect students from low-quality degrees and unmanageable debt.

“With this lawsuit we are going to strike down DeVos’ illegal repeal of the gainful employment rule and protect students from schools that leave borrowers with worthless degrees and debt they can never repay,” said Aaron Ament, president of NSLDN, in a press release.

In her continued effort to repeal or rewrite higher education regulations, Secretary DeVos first delayed, then delayed some more, and finally repealed the 2014 gainful employment regulation in July 2019. The Secretary claimed the rule unfairly targeted for-profit colleges—an industry rife with predatory practices, fraud, and abysmal outcomes for students—even though it was not a regulation solely for for-profit schools.

Under the Higher Education Act, career-oriented programs (think welding or nursing) and all programs at for-profit colleges must show that they lead to “gainful employment” for their graduates. This provision has appeared in some form since the Higher Education Act was first passed in 1965. After years without specificity of what this actually meant, the Obama Administration issued a regulation to finally put some teeth on one of the few accountability tools in higher education.

The rule basically created a debt-to-income measurement so that if these programs left their graduates with sky-high debt and too little income to repay it they would lose access to federal student aid—grants and loans. Issuing this regulation was meant to protect students from programs that would saddle them with debt they’d either never repay or struggle to do so. And it would protect taxpayers from having to foot the bill for loans that won’t be repaid because low-quality programs didn’t get their graduates in jobs with salaries sufficient to repay their debt.

All kinds of programs failed the gainful employment rule. For example, a dental laboratory technology certificate program left graduates with median earnings under $7,000, well under the federal poverty level. And it impacted all degree levels and types of schools. A graduate certificate at Harvard even failed the test. It was far from perfect as it didn’t address the schools that failed to graduate their students but left them with debt they cannot afford, but it was a one of the few protections students had.

When DeVos repealed the regulation she said that transparency was enough and released new data on the College Scorecard that showed debt and earnings for each program. While that is a great step in the right direction, it is far from enough. Research has shown that transparency cannot replace accountability and isn’t sufficient to protect students and taxpayers. Reinstating this rule would go a long way to ensure students aren’t left with worthless degrees and unaffordable debt.

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

DeVos Opposes “Choice,” Compares It to Slavery

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2020 //
32

Politico Morning Education reports on Betsy DeVos’ attack on “choice.” She was talking about slavery, not schools. Ironic. She’s wrong about both. She has a gift for bad analogies, like comparing schools to Uber and taxis or food stands outside the ED building.

HOW DEVOS USED THE ABORTION, SLAVERY ANALOGY: DeVos, a Christian conservative, was talking about the Trump administration’s record of opposition to abortion and her own at the Museum of the Bible on Wednesday when she invoked the comparison, saying she was reminded of President Abraham Lincoln “contending with the ‘pro-choice’ arguments of his day.”

— “They suggested that a state’s ‘choice’ to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it,” she said, according to prepared remarks shared Thursday by the department with POLITICO. She said Lincoln reminded “those pro-choicers” that a vast majority of Americans viewed slavery as a moral evil. “Lincoln was right about the slavery ‘choice’ then, and he would be right about the life ‘choice’ today,” she said.

— Similar comparisons between slavery and abortion by conservatives have drawn intense criticism. Minority members of the Utah Legislature, all of them Democrats, condemned comments by GOP Lt. Gov Spencer Cox comparing abortion to slavery at an Eagle Forum convention earlier this month.

— In November, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, a Republican, called abortion a “scourge” that’s comparable to the scourge of slavery. State Sen. Erika Geiss, a Democrat who is black, called the remark “incredibly insensitive,” adding “I don’t think comparing something that is a reproductive health care choice for one in four women … has any place in a conversation about slavery,” the Associated Press reported.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform

Arizona: Goldwater Institute Sues to Invalidate Regulation of Voucher Money

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2020 //
23

The far-right Goldwater Institute has filed a lawsuit claiming that the state has no right to regulate how parents spend their voucher money, the money that is paid by taxpayers. Goldwater says that if the parents misspent the money, it should be refunded to parents so they can try again. The Goldwater Institute, along with the DeVos family and Charles Koch, have sponsored efforts to expand the voucher program to cover all students in the state. They began with the “camel’s nose” under the tent, offering vouchers for students with disabilities (who abandon their federally-protected rights when they go to private schools); then added students in foster care; then added students in “failing” public schools; then students on reservations; then students from military families. They won’t be satisfied until every student in the state gets a voucher to leave public schools for a private school.

The Arizona Republic reports:

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, has filed suit against the state Department of Education contending it doesn’t have the authority to enforce rules governing Arizona’s school voucher program.

The suit — which was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court and names the state attorney general as a defendant — alleges the Department of Education didn’t follow the state’s rule-making process when it created the ESA handbook, a set of rules that outlines the Empowerment Scholarship Account program. The ESA program grants parents money to send their children to private school.

The suit also contends the Department of Education does not have the authority to require that parents who have misspent ESA money reimburse the state for those funds. It is demanding the Department of Education instead put that misspent money back into parents’ accounts. 

Finally, the lawsuit claims the department has no right to make funding conditional on parents filing expense reports to document how they spent the taxpayer money. It calls the quarterly reports “cumbersome and time-consuming” and says as a result payments to participants are often late, breaching their contract and causing them to miss payments to private schools.

Under the ESA program, parents receive 90% of the state funding that would otherwise go to their local public school districts. Children in six categories, such as those with special needs, in foster care, from failing schools and others, are allowed to enroll in the program. 

The voucher money, loaded on debit cards, is intended to cover specific education expenses such as private- or religious-school tuition, home-school expenses and education-related therapies.

Dawn Penich-Thacker, spokeswoman for Save Our Schools Arizona, which has opposed expansion of the ESA program, said the suit is really about stripping power from Kathy Hoffman, the Democratic superintendent of public instruction elected in 2018.

“They (Goldwater) don’t want her having any say over it,” Penich-Thacker said. 

Parents have complained about the expense reports for years but Goldwater only now filed suit, Penich-Thacker said. 

Last year, two bills in the Arizona Legislature would have stripped oversight of the ESA program from Hoffman and given it to the Treasurer’s Office, which is overseen by Republican Kimberly Yee.

“Suddenly, this is when the school choice community is up in arms,” Penich-Thacker said. “Parents are saying this is happening since day one, but it took the election of 2018 for anything to actually become a problem.” 

The Goldwater Institute has been involved in shaping the ESA program since before the voucher program became law in 2011. 

The think tank was instrumental in writing the legislation that created the program. It was also deeply involved in the numerous expansions of the law, which were often copied from model legislation written by special interests.

It was a big backer of the universal voucher expansion that would have allowed all 1.1 million Arizona public school students to use public money to go to private school. The number of students receiving the funds would have been capped at 30,000. Voters overturned the voucher law in November 2018 by a vote of 65% to 35%.

Goldwater also has wielded an “iron-like grip level of influence” behind the scenes with the Department of Education, attempting to dictate how the program should be implemented and acting as if it retained ownership of the program.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Vouchers

DeVos Ignores Judge’s Order: Will She Be Punished?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2020 //
37

During the Obama administration, Congress passed legislation to protect students who had been defrauded by for-profit colleges. In most cases, the “colleges” made claims about their success in placing their graduates in jobs. As a result of these misleading claims, thousands of students paid for a worthless degree. The Education Department attempted to help them get restitution. The Education Department was on the side of the victims of predatory colleges.

But times change, and now Betsy DeVos is in charge. In the past, she has invested in for-profit colleges. She has no sympathy for students who were defrauded. She thinks they are trying to get free money, and she has dragged her heels. Clearly she sides with for-profit colleges, not students.

A lawsuit was brought against the Department of Education for sending debt collectors to hound students who had been defrauded. The judge in the case, Judge Sallie Kim, fined the U.S. Department of Education $100,000 after ED admitted that it attempted to collect on debts owed by 16,000 students. For some unknown reason, the $100,000 was supposed to help those students, but each one would receive just a few dollars, maybe enough for a cup of coffee.

After the fine was imposed and DeVos was held in contempt of court, the Department announced that it had sent debt collectors to yet another 29,000 students (well, now that $100,000 fine amounts to about $2 for each defrauded student).

Despite the fine and the court order, the Department admitted that it continued to pursue students at late as last month.

Now Judge Kim must decide how to deal with the contemptuous, possibly criminal activities of the Department of Education. 

A federal judge is weighing higher fines for the Education Department after the federal agency disclosed that it pursued scores of additional borrowers for debt collection — violating a court order.

Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco agreed this week to consider a request by former Corinthian Colleges students to increase the $100,000 fine she levied against the department in October. The judge imposed those sanctions and held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt for pursuing loans owed by 16,000 students from the defunct for-profit chain despite a May 2018 order halting collections.

In December, the Education Department revealed in a court filing that it identified another 29,000 people who were pursued for loan payments. The agency also informed attorneys for the students that it never fully ceased collections and went after at least 21 people for payments as recently as last month…

Attorneys for the Corinthian students have argued that the department’s continued violation of the order warrants harsher penalties. Hundreds of people lost wages or tax refunds because of the collection practice, while thousands of others were hit with negative marks on their credit reports. Some people who lost wages told attorneys that their utilities were cut off or they faced eviction.

The Education Department has collected more than $20 million from Corinthian students represented in the class-action case. It has yet to refund all of the money.

Money from the $100,000 fine was meant to provide redress for 16,000 borrowers, but because 45,000 people were affected, attorneys say far more compensation is needed….

The ongoing dispute stems from a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 by the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard University and the Housing and Economic Rights Advocates on behalf of Corinthian students. The groups alleged DeVos had illegally limited loan forgiveness due to students under a statute known as borrower defense to repayment.

Kim agreed the Trump administration violated privacy laws by using Social Security Administration data to calculate loan forgiveness. She banned the Education Department from using the earnings data to grant partial student debt relief to Corinthian students and halted collection on their loans.

DeVos has cited the ruling as the reason the department sat on nearly 300,000 borrower defense claims for more than a year. The department began clearing the backlog in December after updating its methodology with a sliding scale based on a borrower’s wages to determine loan forgiveness.

In other words, DeVos took the position that if the student was defrauded but was earning money, the student could not recover the money spent on a worthless degree.

The judge has the power to increase the fine the Department must pay, which means that we the taxpayers have to pay for DeVos’ efforts to protect the predatory colleges and persecute the defrauded students.

Peter Greene wrote about this controversy here.

G.F. Brandenburg wrote about it here. 

Brandenburg says he hopes DeVos goes to jail.

Clearly the judge will not fine her personally.

The students should be paid back.

I agree with Brandenburg: DeVos should go to jail for her ruthless indifference to the plight of students who were defrauded and were supposed to be protected.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Mike Bloomberg Announces Centerpiece of His Education Agenda: Charter Schools Galore!

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2020 //
25

It was a curious fact that when billionaire Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York City for 12 years, he had complete control of the public schools yet did not have any fresh ideas about how to improve them.

This should not be surprising, because he was never an educator. He hired another non-educator–Joel Klein–to be his chancellor. The two of them relied heavily on McKinsey and other consultants to guide them. They hired lots of MBAs to staff top  positions. They hoped to adopt a corporate style of organization, which made sense because they had low regard for actual educators.

He adopted every aspect of No Child Left Behind: high-stakes testing, closing schools, firing teachers and principals. He loved opening small schools, and when they failed, he reopened them with a new name so they could start over.

New York City was a faithful replication of NCLB, with punishments and rewards leading the way.

His main idea was to hand schools over to private charter operators, assuming that they would have better ideas about how to run schools than he did.

Some of the charter operators made a point of excluding low-performing students, which artificially boosted their test scores.

Some closed their enrollments in the fourth grade, so they would not have to take in new students after that point.

Some kicked out kids who were in need of special services.

Bloomberg’s favorite charter chain was Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy, which used all of these tricks to get astonishingly high test scores.

Bloomberg was obsessed with data and test scores. He even adopted Jeb Bush’s policy of letter grades for schools (which his successor Bill DeBlasio abolished).

The New York City charter industry practiced all the tricks of raising test scores by manipulating the student population.

In addition, the charter sector mastered the ability to organize mass rallies, flooding legislative halls with students and parents, pleading for more funding for new charters (which they could not attend since they were already enrolled in charters).

So pleased was Bloomberg with his charter policy that it is now the centerpiece of his national education agenda.

He doesn’t care about the nearly 90% of kids who are enrolled in public schools.

He believes in privatization.

If elected, he could retain Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education and maintain continuity with Trump’s education agenda.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New York City, Privatization, Testing

Betsy DeVos Defends Her Indifference towards Defrauded Students

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2020 //
14

Last month, Betsy DeVos testified to Congress about her role in the student loan program. 

Her Department hounded students to pay back loans instead of canceling them because their for-profit college defrauded them. A federal judge ordered the Department to stop harassing the students, then fined the Department $100,000 for violating the court order.

Rep. Josh Harder of California grilled her for her failure to side with the students. He accused her of acting like a lobbyist for the for-profit colleges.

It’s a powerful segment. Worth watching to see her utter and callous indifference to the suffering of students who accumulated tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a worthless degree.

Rep. Harder said he understood why she didn’t care: a student’s debt of $40,000 represented a minuscule fraction of the cost of one of her 10 yachts.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Carson County, Nevada. She teaches the children who were left behind.

She sent this post to every legislator in Nevada:

A small group of vocal teachers, parents, and activists have been publicly concerned about national public school privatization for two decades.  
 
Diane Ravitch is the leader of that pack.  
 
Her new book is coming out soon.  
 
Her last books included characters who are national culprits in destroying American Public Schools.  Some have come from my state of Nevada.  
 
Reform was meant to change a system of education that needed to change.  Still needs change. Admittedly we need to improve.  No one argues against that.  Teachers have always been willing to improve.  
 
This reform was not ever meant to improve.  
 
Change came.   The wrong kind.  
 
Big bad horrific and public school destroying change came.   
 
It was bad change bought by corporations who do not love children, will not love children, and seek money even if harm comes to children. 
 
Wrecking ball.  
 
National level well funded and crushing. 
 
Reformers will not use the data – they supposedly worshipped – to admit – they were wrong. 
 
Devastatingly wrong. 
 
Wrong in ways that were really destructive over two generations.   Destroying the central fabric of America – attacking our local public schools.  Kids were warehoused in experiments.  Kids without teachers.   Kids hooked up to innovations that made money but did not educated.  
Billions spent on reforms:  disruption, return on investment, testing, take over, turnaround, triggering, attacking teachers, standardization, score chasing has barely moved American Students on the NAEP Assessments.  
 
The data is back. 
Business reformers failed.   Return on investment was zero.  
 
Reform has been successful at systematically privatizing huge amounts of education cash.  It has segregated.  It has devastated.  It has destroyed public school communities.  And disenfranchised students are further behind than ever before. 
 
The teachers were crushed and millions left. 
 
This expensive business-type reform did not improve education.  
 
Unfortunately, the folks driving reform were not teachers – nor were they interested in authentic education.   Billionaires who were successful in business took over.  They bought the top levels of government and spread cash from the top down.  Both parties.   Anyone with power.   And policy makers and leadership sold out hard. Money taken from public schools to be spent on scams and fads. 
Billions wasted.   
 
Money and people who chase dollars should never be in charge of education policy.  Neoliberals and corporations who hide from liability will never create the synergy, caring, and community building that teachers can do in a school building. 
 
Now the billionaires know – public school teachers will fight.  Activists will engage.  Those who love children will activate. 
 
Take that Goliath.
 
A band of loud people who care – will fight with any small stone we can find. 
We are not scared – because we are right.  
 
Time for policy makers and leadership to buy a book.  
 
O God hear the words of my mouth – hold us in Your Hand because we are small against those seeking to harm kids.  
 
The Teacher,
Angie Sullivan. 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Nevada, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
24

Jennifer Berkshire writes in The Nation about the quandary of Democratic candidates. For years, charter schools had bipartisan support. Clinton and Obama both supported charter schools, and joined with Republicans to expand the federal Charter Schools Program, which is now the single biggest source of funding for charter schools at $440 million annually (the second biggest source is the Walton Family Foundation).

Then came the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, with their full-throated advocacy for school choice, including vouchers. In red states like Ohio, voucher programs are exploding, and Democrats are pushing back against school choice. They are also pushing back against charter schools, as we saw in Kentucky and Virginia, where pro-public education governors were elected.

Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic candidates are weaving and bobbing. Sanders and Warren have come out against charter schools and privatization. Other candidates are trying to thread the needle, not fully rejecting charter schools, but opposing “for-profit” charter schools (which are legal only in Arizona, but are found in almost every state with charters that are managed by for-profit EMO managers).

Berkshire begins:

When seven of the Democratic presidential candidates descended on Pittsburgh recently for a day-long forum on public education, one of Pennsylvania’s unlikeliest new political stars was on hand to greet them. Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks, a black single mom from North Philly, won an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council this fall, stunning the political establishment. At the heart of Brooks’s insurgent campaign was her resistance to Philadelphia’s two-decade-long experiment with school privatization, including the explosion of charter schools and the mass closure of neighborhood schools. “If we as community members don’t commit to this public institution that we fought so hard for generations ago, we’re going to lose control of it,” says Brooks.

Her message resonated with Philly’s voters, and thrilled the audience of teachers and activists who were on hand in Pittsburgh to hear a long list of presidential hopefuls weigh in on the future of the country’s schools. But just outside of the convention center, on a rain-slicked plaza, the resistance to the Democrats’ leftward swing on education was on vivid display. Over 100 charter school parents, part of the same school choice network that disrupted an Elizabeth Warren campaign event last month, came armed with a message of their own: Black Democrats support charter schools.

Welcome to the Democrats’ school choice wars. For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.

Progressive Democrats recognize that charters are a step towards vouchers and are fully a part of the DeVos crusade to eliminate public schools. We will watch to see what happens to the other candidates.

And we will also watch as DeVos hands out yet another $440 million to corporate charter chains, charter advocacy organizations, and even to states that don’t want the money (see New Hampshire and Michigan, both of which said they did not want more money for charter schools).

We now know that the core constituency for charters and vouchers are Wall Street financiers, hedge fund managers, billionaires, libertarians, right-wingers, ALEC, and the far-right. Where do Democrats fit into this coalition?

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation
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