Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Jennifer Berkshire: Could Betsy DeVos Cost Trump the Election?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2019 //
16

Jennifer Berkshire writes in the New Republic that Betsy DeVos is deeply unpopular in swing-state Michigan. Voters in Detroit can see a district disrupted by a generation of failed reforms. Suburban voters like their public schools and don’t want charters or vouchers.  Berkshire notes that the Democrats are picking up unlikely victories in districts where education is a big issue.

In 2016, Darrin Camilleri was 24 and teaching at a Detroit charter school 20 miles from where he grew up, when Michigan lawmakers took up a measure to implement more rigorous oversight of the city’s charter schools. Seemingly anyone could open a charter in Detroit, and the schools closed just as suddenly as they opened. From his classroom on the city’s southwest side, Camilleri watched the reform effort fail. “Watching that play out really showed me the downside of deregulation,” he told me. “No one is holding anyone accountable.” That year, he decided to run for state representative in southern Wayne County, a largely blue-collar area that shades rural at its edges. Rather than hewing to standard Democratic talking points—health care, for instance, or Donald Trump’s erratic comments—Camilleri made charter school oversight and school funding his central issues, and in 2016, he became the only Democrat to flip a Republican state house seat in Michigan.

In the three years since Trump turned Michigan red, education has emerged as a potent political issue in the state, thanks to a steady stream of grim studies and embarrassing news stories. Between 2003 and 2015, the state ranked last out of all 50 for improvement in math and reading. According to a recent study, Michigan now spends less on its schools than it did in 1994. Republicans have slashed funding to give tax cuts to big businesses. And the number of people who choose to become teachers has fallen dramatically….

Consider the political climate in Michigan’s suburban districts. In 2018, when Padma Kuppa challenged a Republican state representative, she homed in on the GOP’s role in undermining public education and won, claiming a seat in Troy, an affluent suburban district north of Detroit that Democrats had never held before. Suburban districts like the one in Troy regularly top “best schools in Michigan” lists, with high test scores and graduation rates, and loads of AP offerings. “People here like their public schools, regardless of what party they belong to,” Kuppa said. The GOP’s steady expansion of a largely unregulated charter school sector has very little to offer voters in communities like hers.

Matt Koleszar, a high school social studies and English teacher, won his race for state representative in suburban Plymouth with a message of what he describes as “tenacious support for public schools.” His call for adequate school funding resonated in this “purple” district, he told me, but so did tying his opponent, Jeff Noble, to Betsy DeVos. Noble had scored an endorsement from the education advocacy group DeVos founded, and raised thousands from her extended family. In 2018, he even backed a controversial law to give charter schools a cut of any property tax increases at the county level. “When I went door to door, explaining to people that this meant that their taxes were going to some for-profit charter school headquarters that’s not even in the district, they were outraged,” Koleszar said….

That relationship could backfire on Trump not only in Michigan’s suburbs, but also in rural areas, where the GOP’s education policies have even less to offer voters. There, the local schools are foundational community institutions, and the conservative push to privatize public services has transferred bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria workers, and even some coaches on to the payroll of private contractors that pay less than the state does while providing fewer benefits. “When you’ve gutted all of the insurance for these jobs, they’re not that attractive,” said Keith Smith, the superintendent of schools in rural Kingsley, Michigan. Cuts have forced school districts like his to ax “extras,” such as music, counseling, and the vocational programs that prepare students to work in skilled trades….

The success of candidates who yoked their opponents to DeVos in 2018 should provide valuable lessons for the eventual Democratic nominee, not only in Michigan but also in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida, where the GOP has embraced her agenda. For Democrats who have spent much of the last decade teaming up with the GOP to expand charter schools, a new strategy could prove fruitful. Trump, after all, may have trouble distancing himself from DeVos’s legacy: He announced his reelection bid at Orlando’s Amway Center, named for the multilevel marketing company that has so enriched her family.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice, Trump

Federal Judge Holds DeVos in Contempt of Court, Fines Ed Department $100,000

By dianeravitch
October 24, 2019 //
48

 

A federal judge found Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in contempt of court and fined her Department $100,000, which is less than a slap in the wrist. It won’t begin to cover the losses suffered by students who were hounded by the Department to repay fraudulent student loans for a fraudulent education at for-profit colleges. DeVos believes it is her duty to protect the fraudsters, not the students.

A federal judge on Thursday held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt for violating an order to stop collecting loan payments from former Corinthian Colleges students.

Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco slapped the Education Department with a $100,000 fine for violating a preliminary injunction. Money from the fine will be used to compensate the 16,000 people harmed by the federal agency’s actions. Some former students of the defunct for-profit college had their paychecks garnished. Others had their tax refunds seized by the federal government.

“There is no question that the defendants violated the preliminary injunction. There is also no question that defendants’ violations harmed individual borrowers,” Kim wrote in her ruling Thursday. “Defendants have not provided evidence that they were unable to comply with the preliminary injunction, and the evidence shows only minimal efforts to comply.”

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

DeVos Sent Millions to Unaccredited Colleges

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2019 //
39

Evidently every part of the Trump administration believes it is above the law. The Washington Post reported today that the Education Department spent millions for student aid at for-profit colleges that were ineligible to receive federal

funding.

A trove of documents released Tuesday by the House Education and Labor Committee shows the Education Department provided $10.7 million in federal loans and grants to students at the Illinois Institute of Art and the Art Institute of Colorado even though officials knew the for-profit colleges were not accredited and ineligible to receive such aid.

The documents build on prior reports from the committee describing efforts by Education Department officials to shield Dream Center Education Holdings, owner of the Art Institutes and Argosy University, from the consequences of lying to students about the accreditation of its since-closed schools. Now it appears the Education Department tried to shield itself from an ill-fated decision to allow millions of dollars to flow to those schools.

Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the House Education Committee, is threatening to subpoena Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for more documents related to the department’s role in Dream Center’s actions. Scott says the agency has obstructed the committee’s investigation and refused to answer questions, as emails and letters paint a picture of a federal agency complicit in an effort to place profits before students.

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Higher Education, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt, U.S. Department of Education

Washington State: Another Charter School Closes Due to Dwindling Enrollment

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2019 //
6

 

Do you remember the prolonged battle over charter schools in Washington State? There were four referenda in the state, starting in the late 1990s, and the pro-charter forces lost the first three. On the fourth try, in 2012, Bill Gates and his friends bundled millions of dollars to buy the election. They outspent civil rights groups, PTAs, and teacher associations by a margin of 16 to 1. Sixteen to one!

And Gates and friends won the election by about 1% of the vote. Then the losing side appealed to the state courts to block charter funding, which would divert money from the state’s underfunded public schools. The State Supreme Court ruled that charter schools are not “common schools,” as defined in the state constitution, because their boards are not elected. Thus, charters are not eligible to take money from the public school, fund.

Gates and friends then waged a campaign to defeat the Supreme Court judges who ruled against them, but they were re-elected despite the money thrown into the coffers of the candidates who opposed them.

Gates then put pressure on the Legislature to fund his charters. After much lobbying, the Legislature gave lottery money to sustain the billionaire’s charters (surely, you don’t expect Bill Gates to fund them himself!)

Governor Jay Inslee decided bravely not to take a stand. He neither signed nor vetoed the law diverting lottery money to support charter schools, and the law was enacted.

Gates spent millions more encouraging charters to open.

(This story, with all the details, the data, and the footnotes, is included in my new book, SLAYING GOLIATH, which will be published on January 21, 2020.)

However, it turns out that there is not a lot of demand for charters. Three closed this year due to low enrollments, which made them financially unsound.

Just this week, another charter announced that it was closing, due to dwindling enrollments and staff flight.

The Charter was approved in 2018, opened in August 2019, and is now closing.

Ashé Preparatory Academy welcomed its inaugural class of 140 students in kindergarten, first, second and sixth grades when it opened in August. Within four years, the school hoped to grow to more than 400 studentsacross grades K-8.

But within a month of opening, several staff quit or stopped showing up to work. And by Oct. 4, the day the school’s oversight board voted unanimously to close the school, enrollment had been sliced in half. Ashé’s last day of classes was Friday…

But this fall, the school’s ambitious mission was quickly overshadowed by practical problems in the classrooms. Ashé (pronounced ah-SHAY) relied on an “inclusive” classroom model, which means that students with special needs and those with advanced abilities worked alongside their peers. Teaching all levels of students can be tough for any teacher, Sullivan said, but this was particularly true for staff new to the profession.

About six of the school’s nine teachers and paraprofessionals were new, she said. In hindsight, she added, she should have hired a full-time instructional coach to aid junior staff members. The school’s principal and several staff could not be reached for comment.

On Sept. 24, the school’s oversight board held an emergency meeting after three staff resigned or stopped coming to work, meeting minutes suggest. One option the board discussed: Stop serving sixth graders.

The board convened again three days later; at that meeting, staff pleaded for more help. A first-grade teacher asked for more professional coaching, and a sixth-grade paraeducator remarked that similar calls by sixth-grade staff had gone unanswered.

Then more staff resigned and students left, too. By Oct. 1, just 90 students were enrolled, according to board-meeting minutes. And by Oct. 4, enrollment sank to 70 students.

Charter schools in Washington are publicly funded, but privately run. Sullivan said Ashé raised close to $1 million in grants and was also eligible for state funding based on the number of students enrolled. Because so many students left, the school was expected to run a $700,000 deficit this year.

The fledgling charter-school movement in Washington has grown in fits and starts. Nine are still operating, and several have plans to open over the next few years. This month, a state charter-schools nonprofit won nearly $20 million from the federal government to help new charters get off the ground. But three charters have closed this year — and with the closure of Ashé, charter-school advocates and officials say they intend to take a hard look at what went wrong.

Good old Betsy DeVos to the rescue, giving $20 million in federal funds to open new charters in a state where there is little demand for charters.

One other interesting side note: CREDO analyzed charter performance in Washington State based on three years of data and determined that there was no difference overall between charter schools and public schools.

The findings of this study show that on average, charter students in Washington State experience annual growth in reading and math that is on par with the educational gains of their matched peers who enroll in the traditional public schools (TPS) the charter school students would otherwise have attended.

Question: If both sectors get about the same results, why did Bill Gates spend millions of dollars to open a privately managed sector? Was it sheer vanity?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Washington State

New Hampshire: Democrats Block GOP Effort to Gut Local Control

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2019 //
0

 

New Hampshire’s Republican Governor, Chris Sununu (his father John Sununu was Chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush), appointed a man who homeschooled his children to be State Commissioner of Education. Commissioner Frank Edelblut has dedicated his time in office to undermining public schools. His big idea is called “Learn Everywhere,” which would allow the State Board of education to allow graduation credits for anything they wished, whether it was for-profit, or commercial, or lessons with Miss Sally, or anything else. Local school boards now have that authority, and they rightly complained that Learn Anywhere infringed on their realm.

Edelblut wants to put public schools out of business by allowing anything and everything to count for credit.

He is the Betsy DeVos of New Hampshire.

But Democrats in the legislature threw a big obstacle in front of Edelblut’s plan.

Lawmakers on New Hampshire’s legislative rules committee voted Thursday to reject the proposed “Learn Everywhere” program from the state’s Department of Education, in the latest blow to a months-long effort by Commissioner Frank Edelblut. 

In a 6-4 vote led by Democrats on party lines, members of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules voted to issue a final objection to the proposed rule change. 

But the action doesn’t kill the program for good. Under state law, the Department of Education can proceed with the rules over the objections of lawmakers. Doing that, though, would be risky. The department would assume all liability in the case of legal action, according to lawyers for the state’s Office of Legislative Services on Thursday.

If the citizens of NewHampshire want to save their public schools and prevent massive fraud with their tax monies, they have to replace Governor Sununu when he runs again and insist that the new governor put an educator in charge of the State Education Department.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Hampshire, Privatization, School Choice

Attorney General Barr Wants to Erase Separation of Church and State

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2019 //
108

Jeffrey Toobin wrote a scathing analysis of a recent speech by Attorney General Bill Barr in The New Yorker magazine. Like Betsy DeVos, his colleague in Trump’s Cabinet, Barr believes that religious schools should be supported with public funds and that the failure to do so is religious discrimination.

He writes:

William P. Barr just gave the worst speech by an Attorney General of the United States in modern history. Speaking at the University of Notre Dame last Friday, Barr took “religious liberty” as his subject, and he portrayed his fellow-believers as a beleaguered and oppressed minority. He was addressing, he said, “the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; this is organized destruction.”

Historically illiterate, morally obtuse, and willfully misleading, the speech portrays religious people in the United States as beset by a hostile band of “secularists.” Actually, religion is thriving here (as it should be in a free society), but Barr claims the mantle of victimhood in order to press for a right-wing political agenda. In a potted history of the founding of the Republic, Barr said, “In the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people—a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order.” Not so. The Framers believed that free government was suitable for believers and nonbelievers alike. As Justice Hugo Black put it in 1961, “Neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” But the real harm of Barr’s speech is not what it means for historical debates but what it portends for contemporary government policy.

The real giveaway of Barr’s agenda came near the end of his speech when he said, with curious vagueness, “Militant secularists today do not have a live-and-let-live spirit—they are not content to leave religious people alone to practice their faith. Instead, they seem to take a delight in compelling people to violate their conscience.” What’s he really talking about here? Barr and the Trump Administration want religious people who operate businesses to be allowed to discriminate against L.G.B.T.Q. people. The Trump Justice Department supported the Colorado bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple (in a case that the Supreme Courtbasically ducked last year), but more such lawsuits are in the pipeline. Innkeepers, restaurant owners, and photographers are all using the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment to justify their refusal to serve gay customers. This is Barr’s idea of leaving “religious people alone to practice their faith.” The real beleaguered minorities here are gay people who are simply trying to be treated like everyone else, but Barr twists this story into one about oppression of believers.

The heart of Barr’s speech is devoted to a supposed war on religion in education. “Ground zero for these attacks on religion are the schools. To me, this is the most serious challenge to religious liberty,” he said. He asserted that the problem is “state policies designed to starve religious schools of generally available funds and encouraging students to choose secular options.” Again, Barr engages in a measure of vagueness to obscure his real subject. Historically, parochial schools have flourished largely outside of government supervision and, just as important, without government funding. This reflects the core meaning of the establishment clause, which enshrines the separation of church and state.

But, in recent years, a key tenet of the evangelical movement (and its supporters, like Barr) is an effort to get access to taxpayer dollars. In a major case before the Supreme Court this year, the Trump Administration is supporting religious parents who want to use a Montana state-tax-credit program to pay for their children’s religious schools. This effort is also a major priority of Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, who is pushing for the increased availability of taxpayer vouchers to pay for religious schools. Barr portrays these efforts as the free exercise of religion when, in fact, they are the establishment of religion; partisanship in the war between the religion clauses is one of the signatures of Trump’s tenure in office. Of course, the necessary corollary to providing government subsidies to religious schools is starving the public schools, which are open to all children, of funds. 

Perhaps the most galling part of Barr’s speech, under current circumstances, is its hymn to the pious life. He denounces “moral chaos” and “irresponsible personal conduct” as well as “licentiousness—the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good.” By contrast, “religion helps teach, train, and habituate people to want what is good.” Throughout this lecture, one can only wonder if William Barr has ever actually met Donald Trump.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos Floods North Carolina with Charter Cash

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2019 //
14

Betsy DeVos just dropped $36 million on North Carolina to lure children out of their public schools and into charter schools. The state is not sure it can spend the money.

North Carolina will now have more than $36 million in federal funding to help increase enrollment in charter schools, particularly for children from low-income groups.

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction announced Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Education is awarding the state an additional $10 million to support a statewide initiative to use charter schoolsto help meet the needs of educationally disadvantaged students. This comes on top of the $26.6 million federal grant awarded last year to increase the number of charter schools across the state.

It’s a financial windfall that has caused charter school leaders across the state to apply for a share of the federal funding.

“The reality is — let the elephant out here — that we’re going to have difficulty spending this money perhaps,” Joseph Maimone, a member of the N.C. Charter Schools Advisory Board, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “We’ve got to really think about how difficult it’s going to be to use up the entire grant.”

State officials say they’re confident that they can spend the $36.6 million.

Charter schools are taxpayer-funded schools that are exempt from some of the rules that traditional public schools must follow, such as providing school meals and bus service. Charter schools have a lower percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price lunches than traditional public schools.

There are 198 charter schools open in North Carolina serving more than 100,000 students. Enrollment has surged since state lawmakers voted in 2011 to eliminate the state limit of 100 charter schools.

Supporters say charter schools provide families with more education options. But critics say charters siphon money away from traditional public schools and increase school segregation.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, North Carolina, Privatization

Tennessee: Don’t Copy Alabama’s Mistakes!

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2019 //
3

Andy Spears, editor of the Tennessee Education Report, says that Tennessee should learn from Alabama’s mistakes when authorizing charter schools.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee wants to disrupt public schools and throw open the public treasury to anyone who wants to open a charter school. He wants charters to open without the approval of local school districts, a recipe for disruption and an attack on local control.

Andy Spears writes:

Look to Alabama to see what happens.

Here’s more from the Alabama Political Reporter:

Woodland Prep is a charter school horror story — and it hasn’t even been built yet.

Located in rural Washington County, Woodland Prep, which will open as a K-7 school this fall and add a grade level each year, is everything state leaders assured us could never happen under Alabama’s charter school laws.

Its land is owned by a shady Utah holding company. Its building is owned by a for-profit Arizona company. It will be managed by a for-profit Texas company that doesn’t employ a single Alabamian. It will pay the head of that management company around $300,000 per year — up front. Its application was rejected by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which Alabama pays a hefty sum to review and approve charter applications. Woodland’s management plan failed to meet basic standards for approval in any of the three plan areas reviewed by NACSA.

In spite of all of those concerns, Woodland Prep was approved by the Alabama Charter School Commission — a board similar to the one envisioned by Lee and his legislative supporters for authorizing charters in Tennessee.

Governor Lee is following orders from ALEC and Betsy DeVos. He does not have the best interests of the children of Tennessee at heart.

 

Categories Accountability, Alabama, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gulen Charter Schools, Privatization, Tennessee

DeVos to Judge: “Don’t Lock Me Up”

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2019 //
25

Politico reports that the Trump administration is apologizing profusely for hounding students whose loans for attending the predatory (now closed) Corinthian Colleges should have been forgiven. The judge in the case had threatened to punish Betsy DeVos for violating her court order. This is a case of “accountability for thee, but not for me.”

MAKING THE CASE AGAINST CONTEMPT FINDING: The Trump administration, in a court filing on Tuesday night, outlined why the Education Department and DeVos shouldn’t be held in contempt or face fines for violating U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim’s May 2018 order to stop collecting the student loans of former Corinthian Colleges students.

— Justice Department attorneys wrote that the Education Department “has been working diligently and in good faith to correct the errors” that led to the agency collecting on the student loans of thousands of borrowers despite the order. Kim is now deciding whether to hold the department and DeVos in contempt and impose sanctions, including fines, against them.

— “Loan servicers made an error on a small # of loans,” DeVos tweeted last week. “We know & we’re fixing it.” She also accused Sen. Elizabeth Warren of lying about the issue.

— The Trump administration’s filing mostly strikes a conciliatory tone. The department said it appreciates the “gravity” of the situation and the effect it had on affected borrowers. The department also said it was committed to coming into full compliance with the court’s order and asked that any sanctions be “forward-looking” rather than punitive.

— The Education Department conceded, though, that it had been “negligent” in its oversight of student loan companies. The “errors at issue here were not the result of any willful or intentional conduct on the part of the Department, but, as the Court has recognized, gross negligence, including negligent oversight of the Department’s servicers,” attorneys for the department wrote.

— Education Department officials last week sent letters admonishing its loan servicers over the issue and moved to discipline two department officials.

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

Peter Greene: Beware DFER’s Phony Poll about Democrats and Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
15

 

Hedge fund managers decided in 2005 that the best way to advance the charter school idea was to create a faux organization called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), then to funnel campaign cash to Democratic candidates who promised to support charter schools. This worked for a time. Senator Barack Obama spoke at the inaugural meeting of DFER at a penthouse in Manhattan filled with Wall Street types. When Obama was elected, DFER recommended Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education, and Obama picked him over the highly qualified Linda Darling-Hammond, who had been his spokesperson during the campaign.

But some Democrats realized that DFER was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Democratic Party of California passed a resolution demanding that DFER drop the D because it was a front for corporate interests. The Democratic party of Colorado also passed a resolution denouncing DFER.

In 2016, DFER supported a referendum in Massachusetts to expand the number of charter schools, in company with the Waltons and big Republican donors. The charter campaign went down to a crashing defeat, after charters were denounced by the state Democratic Party and almost every school district committee in the state. The only demographic that supported the expansion of charters was members of the Republican Party.

Today, the loudest champion of charter schools is Betsy DeVos. The biggest allies of the charter movement are Republican governors and legislatures.

Sensing the change in the air, recognizing that charter schools now belong to ALEC and DeVos, almost every  Democratic candidate for President has steered clear of charter schools. Bernie Sanders endorsed the NAACP call for a moratorium on new charters.

But wait! DFER has commissioned a poll to demonstrate that Democrats actually favor charters!

Peter Greene says the poll is baloney. He explains it here. His advice: Ignore it.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Education Industry, Fraud, Opinion Polling, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »