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

DeVos School Safety Commission Will Not Consider Role of Guns as Cause of Mass Shootings

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2018 //
24

Betsy DeVos and her school safety commission (three other Cabinet members) will consider all the possible causes of gun violence in schools, except guns.

Alia Wong writes at The Atlantic:

“What should be on the list of tasks for President Trump’s newly minted school-safety commission, charged with studying what can be done to prevent campus violence?

“Perhaps the commission, chaired by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, should look at mental-health resources and student-discipline practices. And perhaps it should consider the design of campus facilities. One thing that would seemingly be an obvious candidate for the commission’s scrutiny is guns, as guns have been the weapon of choice in every major school-violence incident this year.

“And yet it became clear on Tuesday, as DeVos testified in front of a Senate subcommittee to answer questions about the Education Department’s fiscal year 2019 budget request, that will likely not be the case. Amid mostly peaceful exchanges about charter-school expansion, the recent wave of teachers’ strikes, and Pell grants, among other topics, a handful of Democratic Senators repeatedly asked DeVos how gun policy fits into the commission’s duties. She didn’t verbalize the G Word once, and at one point—in response to persistent questioning from Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy about the role of guns in school violence—DeVos dismissed that question as outside the commission’s charge. It’s up to Congress to debate gun control, she indicated; she and the commissioners are instead focusing their research on other potential sources of violence.”

Any ideas?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Guns in Schools

Joanne Barkan: Who and What Are Behind the Privatization Movement?

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2018 //
11

Joanne Barkan has been writing brilliant articles about the billionaire assault on public education for several years. Her first was “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools.”

Her latest is this article, which appeared on Valerie Strauss’s “The Answer Sheet.” She calls it “Death by a Thousand Cuts.” It will ring true for everyone who is fighting the massive money and power of the privatizers.

Barkan supplies a brief history of neoliberalism, as well as the federal efforts to introduce competition and privatization into the schools.

She begins:

When champions of market-based reform in the United States look at public education, they see two separate activities — government funding education and government running schools. The first is okay with them; the second is not. Reformers want to replace their bête noire — what they call the “monopoly of government-run schools” — with freedom of choice in a competitive market dominated by privately run schools that get government subsidies.

Public funding, private management — these four words sum up American-style privatization whether applied to airports, prisons, or elementary and secondary schools. In the last 20 years, the “ed-reform” movement has assembled a mixed bag of players and policies, complicated by alliances of convenience and half-hidden agendas. Donald Trump’s election and his choice of zealot privatizer Betsy DeVos as U.S. secretary of education bolstered reformers but has also made more Americans wary.

What follows is a survey of the controversial movement — where it came from, how it grew, and what it has delivered so far to a nation deeply divided by race and class.

Print it out and take the time to read it. An informed citizenry can stop this behemoth. All that money and power and the privatizers have achieved exactly nothing other than destruction.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Betsy DeVos Turns into Arne Duncan

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2018 //
8

Peter Greene watches with horror as Betsy DeVos turns into Arne Duncan, writing regulations when Congress doesn’t give her the legal authority she wants.

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/06/betsy-devos-becomes-arne-duncan.html?spref=tw&m=1

“So here’s the story. A Secretary of Education becomes frustrated with Congress because the august body of legislators can’t get its act together to reauthorize/rewrite a major piece of law that governs an entire sector of education. So the frustrated secretary digs into their bag of tricks and decides, “Hey, by using my control of certain regulations, I can basically implement the rules that Congress won’t.”

“This, of course, is the Arne Duncan story. Congress wouldn’t get off its collective keister to fix up the Elementary and Secondary Education Act known, at the time, as No Child Left Behind (and several other less friendly names). So Duncan leveraged the penalties that states faced under NCLB, held some money hostage, and used his agency’s regulatory powers to legislate new rules for ESEA, an act that, ironically, united Congress in a bipartisan desire to spank Duncan and that desire, in turn, led to the reauthorized ESEA/NCLB, now known as ESSA.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Duncan, Arne

Valerie Strauss: What DeVos Could Not or Would Not Say at Her Latest Congressional Hearing

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2018 //
11

Our faithful reader Charles asked me a few days ago why I had written nothing about Betsy DeVos’ appearance before Congress. I confess I have a very difficult time watching her testify because I always feel that she is being evasive or duplicitous. She doesn’t say what is on her mind or in her heart. She wants to convince people that she really cares about children, when we know that she really cares about one thing only: School choice. She has taken steps to harm children and college students but she never says flat out what she did and why she did it. Her interview with Leslie Stahl on “60 Minutes” was not atypical. She was primed and ready to dodge questions, not to explain anything candidly. She continues this pattern and I find it painful to watch.

Valerie Strauss wrote a column about DeVos’ testimony on her indispensable “Answer Sheet” blog, hosted by the Washington post.

There were five topics that DeVos could not or would not say or explain, writes Strauss.

1) DeVos could not explain the mission of the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

DeVos has rolled back or is in the process of delaying or gutting some Obama-era guidance and regulations that aimed to protect the rights of some minority groups, including LGBTQ students. The Trump administration’s budget proposals have called for funding cuts to the Office for Civil Rights in the Education Department, but Congress has overruled that. DeVos has changed the focus of the office, limiting the complaints it will address and reining in the systemic action favored by the Obama administration.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio) told DeVos that she was concerned about the weak performance of the Office for Civil Rights. Then she asked DeVos whether she knew the mission of that office.

DEVOS: The Office for Civil Rights is committed to protecting the civil rights as determined under the law of this land. And we do so proudly and with great focus each day.

FUDGE: That’s not the mission statement. Do you know what it is?

DEVOS: I have not . . . .

FUDGE: That’s okay.

DEVOS: I have not memorized the mission statement.

FUDGE: That’s okay. Please explain for me what you would believe to be vigorous enforcement of civil rights in the context of schools today.

DEVOS: It would be following the law and enforcing the law as stated . . . .

FUDGE: So how do you do it if you continue to try to dismantle and defund the office? I’m not understanding.

DEVOS: We haven’t done any such thing.

FUDGE: I think I’ve heard enough.

Later, Rep. Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (D-Northern Mariana Islands) said, “The mission of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence through all the nation.”

2) DeVos did not provide a single detail about any plan she might have to promote inclusivity and access to an appropriate education for students with disabilities. And she wouldn’t commit to pushing Congress to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, known as IDEA, which requires public schools to provide free and appropriate education to all students with disabilities.

3) DeVos refused to directly address questions from Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) about potential conflicts of interest in a pilot student-aid program.

4) A legislator asked DeVos whether she would work with more urgency on her Federal Commission on School Safety to come up with recommendations to make school campuses safer after a rash of mass shootings.

5) Sablan asked her about access to higher education in U.S. territories, and she couldn’t quite answer his question.

I have left out the best parts, meaning the colloquy between DeVos and the members of Congress who asked questions. Her evasions, her ignorance, her indifference, her lack of information were on full display. You can understand why members of Congress find this hearings with DeVos to be frustrating, irritating, and outrageous. She doesn’t know or she isn’t telling what she does know.

Categories Betsy DeVos

New Federal Study: DC Voucher Students Lose Ground in Math

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2018 //
13

A new federal evaluation of the DC voucher program finds that students who used vouchers lost ground in math.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2018/05/29/dcs-private-school-voucher-program-hurt-low-income-students-math-test-scores-according-to-federal-study/

Watch as school choice advocates change the goal posts. Test scores don’t matter.

In the photo, Betsy DeVos appears delighted.

Here is the study:

Click to access 20184010.pdf

Categories Betsy DeVos, District of Columbia

Federal Judge Blocks DeVos’ Protection of For-Profit Frauds

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2018 //
3

Politico reports:

JUDGE DEALS SETBACK TO DEVOS’ HANDLING OF STUDENT FRAUD CLAIMS: The Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to overhaul Obama-era higher education policies drew their first judicial rebuke on Friday evening when a federal judge in California temporarily blocked Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ new approach to processing student loan fraud claims.

— A federal judge in San Francisco blocked DeVos from carrying out her policy of granting only partial loan forgiveness to some defrauded for-profit college students. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim ruled that the Trump administration’s new “tiered relief” process for those student fraud claims violates a federal privacy law meant to protect how government agencies collect and use individuals’ personal information. Read the full story here.

— The court ruled that the Education Department violated the Privacy Act by improperly using borrowers’ federal earnings data from the Social Security Administration to calculate the amount of loan forgiveness for each student. That policy, unveiled by DeVos in December, was aimed at providing defrauded borrowers with debt relief that’s commensurate with how much they suffered. The Trump administration said it was a fairer approach that would protect taxpayers against “runaway costs” of forgiving large amounts of federal student loans.

— “This is an important ruling for former Corinthian Colleges students,” said Toby Merrill, the director of Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending, which brought the lawsuit along with Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, a nonprofit legal advocacy group. “It clearly states that the Department of Education must immediately stop using its lawless partial denial rule.”

— The preliminary injunction issued Friday blocks DeVos from carrying out the partial loan forgiveness policy “as it currently exists.” But the 38-page ruling makes clear that the Trump administration could come up with a different process that provides partial loan forgiveness for defrauded students. Judge Kim wrote that “there is no question that the [Education] Secretary has the power to determine the amount of relief a borrower can obtain” so long as that process for doing so is lawful. She also rejected the former students’ claims that DeVos’ partial loan forgiveness policy was “arbitrary and capricious” or that it violated their due process rights.

— What’s next: The judge ruled that the Education Department’s violation of the Privacy Act warranted an immediate order blocking the policy. But she said she didn’t have enough information to decide whether to go a step further and order the department to provide full loan forgiveness to the former Corinthian students. She set a hearing on that issue for June 4.

OPEN THE URL TO SEE THE LINKS:

http://go.politicoemail.com/?qs=d03a3dace11ffac26c1e3e1960ae708e63d2254e6bf3d8ae0efa97656280856f877dc5687934c0666570ba8204332eb5

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

Charles P. Pierce: Betsy DeVos, Profiting Off Students in an Administration of Grifters

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2018 //
6

Charles P. Pierce, blogger for Esquire, is one of my favorite writers. He has a knack for getting right to the point with pithy phrases and colorful images.

In this post, he calls out a few of the unsavory profiteers in the Trump administration, starting with Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt, who have a taste for first-class travel on the taxpayers’ dime.

Then he gets to DeVos, and he skewers her for abandoning the Department of Ecucation’s Obligation to protec college students who are victims of fraud by for-profit “universities” like Trump University.

DeVos’s spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill defends DeVos’ indefensible actions, as usual.

Pierce writes:

Where do they find these embarrassingly bot-like public liars? How does one “provide oversight” beyond doing investigations? As to Ms. Hill’s assurances that the presence of so many former higher-ed scamsters in the department had no influence in the decision, well, we are once again up against the most serious ontological question about this administration: How many foxes do there have to be before the henhouse becomes a foxhouse?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education, Lies

Peter Greene: Why Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Have to Answer Any Questions

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2018 //
7

Observers have often been puzzled by Betsy DeVos’s opacity. Sometimes she seems baffled by simple questions. Sometimes she gives an answer that dodges the question. Sometimes she has no answer.

What she always has is a half-smile that appears to be a smirk. I have called it the Billionaire’s Smirk. It is a smile that says I am very, very rich, and you are not. You will never be. I am somebody. You are nobody.

Peter Greene explains in detail why she ignores the questions that members of Congress ask her. She feels no need to answer her inferiors. She is not only richer than their wildest dreams. She is on a mission from God.

Why should she respond unless she feels like it?

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/05/betsy-devos-does-not-owe-you-damned.html

Categories Betsy DeVos

Jan Resseger: Betsy DeVos Served Up More Word Salad in New York City

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2018 //
9

Jan Resseger can’t quite believe that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited New York City and failed to tour even one public school.

She went to two private religious schools run by Orthodox Jewish sectarians. She spoke to an event hosted by a Catholic organization.

She talked about her views, which are antithetical to public education.

Weird, isn’t it, that she is the Secretary of Education and is hostile to the schools that enroll 90% of America’s students?

The Betsy DeVos we saw on Leslie Stahl’s interview at 60 Minutes is the real Betsy DeVos.

She doesn’t have a single idea about how to help schools do a better job. Her only idea is choice.

She will, if Congress lets her, slash the budgets of the schools that enroll 90% of the students so as to send more children to religious schools.

She has no sense whatever of public responsibility or the common good. These are foreign concepts to her.

Worst of all, she lacks any education vision whatever for the nation’s children and its schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, New York City, Privatization

Everything You Need to Know about Betsy DeVos’ Termination of Investigation of For-Profit Colleges, Explained by the Daily Show

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2018 //
9

Trevor Noah of the Daily Show explains here in a short video everything you need to know about Betsy DeVos’s decision to terminate the unit investigating fraud in the for-profit college sector. This is an example of a video conveying more than thousands of words.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »