Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
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The Corporate Plan to Prepare Our Children for a Life of Servitude

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
35

 

In this insightful and harrowing article, we can see clearly the contours of a devilish plan, hatched in the corridors of ALEC and other corporate-controlled entities. The centerpiece of the plan is the destruction and privatization of public education, which all of us own and paid for with our taxes.

Read it and get involved. Join the Networkfor Public Education. Join your local advocacy group. Never despair. Don’t stop fighting.

It begins like this:

It was the strike heard ‘round the country.

West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.

It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people.

If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life.

Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, and Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, help illuminate why this is happening, who is behind it, and what’s at stake as the educational system that once united Americans and prepared them for a life of social and economic mobility is wiped out of existence.

The Plan: Lower People’s Expectations

When Lafer began to study the tsunami of corporate-backed legislation that swept the country in early 2011 in the wake of Citizens United—the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums to influence the political system—he wasn’t yet clear what was happening. In state after state, a pattern was emerging of highly coordinated campaigns to smash unions, shrink taxes for the wealthy, and cut public services. Headlines blamed globalization and technology for the squeeze on the majority of the population, but Lafer began to see something far more deliberate working behind the scenes: a hidden force that was well-funded, laser-focused, and astonishingly effective.

Lafer pored over the activities of business lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – funded by giant corporations including Walmart, Amazon.com, and Bank of America—that produces “model legislation” in areas its conservative members use to promote privatization. He studied the Koch network, a constellation of groups affiliated with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. (Koch Industries is the country’s second-largest private company with business including crude oil supply and refining and chemical production). Again and again, he found that corporate-backed lobbyists were able to subvert the clear preferences of the public and their elected representatives in both parties. Of all the areas these lobbyists were able to influence, the policy campaign that netted the most laws passed, featured the most big players, and boasted the most effective organizations was public education. For these U.S. corporations, undermining the public school system was the Holy Grail.


After five years of research and the publication of The One Percent Solution, Lafer concluded that by lobbying to make changes like increasing class sizes, pushing for online instruction, lowering accreditation requirements for teachers, replacing public schools with privately-run charters, getting rid of publicly elected school boards and a host of other tactics, Big Business was aiming to dismantle public education.

The grand plan was even more ambitious. These titans of business wished to completely change the way Americans and their children viewed their life potential. Transforming education was the key.

 

 

 

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers

Stop Vouchers Now! Contact Your Member of Congress and Senators Today!

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2018 //
11

The Network for Public Education needs your help NOW to stop Betsy DeVos’ latest effort to introduce federal vouchers.

DeVos and some Republican members of Congress have introduced legislation to convert a federal $1 billion program called Impact Aid into vouchers for military families. Impact Aid was designed to reimburse public schools that educate the children of military families and also to compensate public school districts because of the loss of federal revenues due to large federal facilities that don’t pay taxes.

HR 5199 and S. 2517 were introduced in the House and the Senate about a month ago. Carol Burris, executive director of NPE, wrote about this effort here. 

Military families have made clear that they don’t want vouchers. They want good public schools.

The Heritage Foundation is lobbying the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to get the voucher bill tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (the annual budget for the Department of Defense), and that DeVos herself is lobbying Secretary of Defense James Mattis to get his support.

Please open the link, which makes it easy to contact  your representatives.

Don’t let the privatizers pull a fast one. Read this appeal, which contains resources as well as an easy way to reach out to your representatives. 

Stop DeVos now!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Vouchers

Yes, Betsy: Spending Does Matter

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2018 //
51

 

Imagine billionaire Betsy DeVos telling the nation that spending doesn’t make a difference in terms of education outcomes. But she did and she is wrong, as Chalkbeat explained.

For starters, correlation is not the same as causation.

But let’s talk common sense, inasmuch as Betsy already said she is not a “numbers person.”

When parents have the means to do so, they move to high-spending suburban districts. It’s not just for the grass and the trees, Betsy. In high-spending districts, their children have beautiful, well-maintained buildings. They have small classes. They have experienced teachers who are paid well. They have up-to-date science laboratories. They have the best technology. They have classes in history, civics, and government. They have programs in the arts. Their schools have a band, a chorus, dance, film, an orchestra, a string quartet, and more. They have a robotics team, a chess club, a debate team. They have a library with a real librarian. They have a school nurse, a social worker, a psychologist, and all kinds of sports activities.

If urban schools were well-funded, they would have all of this. But they don’t.

Betsy, if you truly believe that money doesn’t make a difference, try this thought experiment. What if you gave all your money away? Where would you be today?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Funding

Jennifer Berkshire: How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2018 //
148

 

Jennifer Berkshire recounts the sad history of the Democratic party’s abandonment of teachers, public schools, and teachers’ unions. 

This article is worthy of your attention. In my view, Democrats won’t start winning seats again until they embrace public schools again and break free of their love affair with charters and other free-market solutions that evicerate their message and turn them into Republican-lite.

How many Democratic governors today are unabashed supporters of public schools? How many Democratic Senators and members of Congress? How many are funded by Democrats for Education Reform (hedge fund managers who love charter schools and high-stakes testing), whose purpose is to buy Democratic support for Republican policies?

The strange part about the story that Berkshire tells  is that the teachers’ unions were a core part of the Democrats’ base. As party leaders turned against their own base, they hurt their party. They turned off teachers and lost seats across the nation. They lost governorships and they lost legislatures. They lost the House and they lost the Senate.

Berkshire says that it started with the Clintons in Arkansas.

“To begin to chronicle the origin of the Democrats’ war on their own—the public school teachers and their unions that provide the troops and the dough in each new campaign cycle to elect the Democrats—is to enter murky territory. The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’s teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas. As Hillary biographer Carl Bernstein recounts, the Arkansas State Teachers Association became the villain that cemented the couple’s hold on the Governor’s mansion—the center of their Dick Morris-inspired “permanent campaign.” The civil rights language in which the Democratic anti-union brigade cloaks itself today was then nowhere to be heard, however. And little wonder: Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt.

“Tough talk against Arkansas’ teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas.

“Hillary made the cause her personal crusade in 1983, trotting out anecdote after anecdote about teachers she’d heard about who couldn’t add or read. The reform package passed, cementing Bill’s reputation as a new breed of Democratic governor, one who wasn’t afraid to take on entrenched interests in order to tackle tough problems. “Anytime you’re going to turn an institution upside down, there’s going to be a good guy and a bad guy,” recalls Clinton campaign manager Richard Herget. “The Clintons painted themselves as the good guys. The bad guys were the schoolteachers.”

“By the early 1980s, there was already a word for turning public institutions upside down: neoliberalism. Before it degenerated into a flabby insult, neoliberal referred to a self-identified brand of Democrat, ready to break with the tired of dogmas of the past. “The solutions of the thirties will not solve the problems of the eighties,” wrote Randall Rothenberg in his breathless 1984 paean to this new breed, whom he called simply The Neoliberals. His list of luminaries included the likes of Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart and Al Gore (for the record, Gore eschewed the neoliberal label in favor of something he liked to call “neopopulism”). In Rothenberg’s telling, the ascendancy of the neoliberals represented an economic repositioning of the Democratic Party that had begun during the economic crises of the 1970s. The era of big, affirmative government demanding action—desegregate those schools, clean up those polluted rivers, enforce those civil rights and labor laws—was over. It was time for fresh neo-ideas.

”Redistribution and government intervention were out; investment and public-private partnerships were the way to go. Neoliberal man (there are no women included in Rothenberg’s account) was also convinced that he had found the answer to the nation’s economic malaise: education, or as he was apt to put it, investment in human capital. “Education equals growth is a neoliberal equation,” writes Rothenberg.

“But this new cult of education wasn’t grounded in John Dewey’s vision of education-as-democracy, or in the recent civil-rights battles to extend the promise of public education to excluded African-American communities. No, these bold, results-oriented thinkers understood that in order to fuel economic growth, schools had to be retooled and aligned in concert with the needs of employers. The workers of the future would be prepared to compete nimbly in the knowledge-based post-industrial society of the present, For the stragglers still trapped in older, industrial-age models of enterprise and labor, re-training—another staple of the neoliberal vision—would set them on the path to greater prosperity…

”The irony is that the DeVos-Trump vision for fixing our schools is almost as unpopular as the GOP’s plan for health care; if there’s political ground to be gained with Trump supporters, the defense of public education is fertile territory. DeVos’ nomination sparked ferocious grassroots opposition, red and blue, and in a cabinet of rogues, she remains Trump’s most reviled official. Her signature issue—paying for private religious schools with taxpayer funds—has never been popular with voters, even in deep red states.

“The problem is that the Democrats have little to offer that’s markedly different from what DeVos is selling. Teachers unions, regulation, and government schools are the problem, Democrats continue insisting into the void; deregulation, market competition and school choice are the fix. Four decades after the neo-Democrats set their sights on the education bureaucracy, the journey has reached its predictable destination: with a paler version of what the right has been offering all along.

“When the Democrats next attempt to rouse the base of unionized teachers they count on to be their foot soldiers, they are sure to meet with disappointment. In once reliably blue states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the unions have been eviscerated. The right went all in to crush unions—not because they “impede social mobility,” but because they elect Democrats. That wager is now paying off handsomely.”

Unless there is breaking news, no more posts today.

 

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats, Duncan, Arne

Ed Berger: Arizona Government and Dark Money

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2018 //
3

Ed Berger, retired teacher, lives in Arizona and fights for the return of honest government.

He writes:

Arizona Government Does Not Match The Decency And Will Of Its People

We live in Arizona. We are decent, law abiding, citizens. So why is Arizona considered one of the most corrupt states in America? Why is Arizona often the example of how Democracy can be subverted? Why is our state out of sync with its population? What is wrong? Arizona government does not match the values of our citizens.
What can we do to make our elected representatives reflect the decency and will of the people? We must vote to remove those who corrupt the democratic process and their elected positions by accepting Dark Money.

Let’s examine a recent Senate/House vote. House Bill 2153 was passed into law over the objections of community leaders and citizens of all political parties and went into effect April 2, 2018. It prohibits any local government requirement to identify contributors to local political campaigns. Seventeen Senate members and thirty-three House members approved this measure and Governor Ducey signed it into law. This runs counter to initiatives by many communities acting in the public interest to expose Dark Money and its’ use to buy and place representatives and government leaders. They want to stop the covert, negative and destructive methods of oligarchs that bypass the citizen’s right to elect representatives they have vetted and chosen.

This is a current example of how the will of the people was ignored. To clean AZ government, we can study how representatives voted on key issues like this one, share their deeds, and get the bad ones gone. What We The People now have is a list of the seventeen senators and thirty-three house members who sold us out.

Prescott is still reeling from the effect of Dark Money in recent elections. In the race for District #1, few know that DeVos money (Dark Money) went to support a candidate this community rejected. With access to DeVos money and the use of gerrymandering, the citizen’s candidate was undermined and defeated. His opponent won and now owes DeVos bigtime. The recent mayoral election in Prescott is another example of how democracy is subverted by money and power. Those elected to represent us in the legislature are too often there because they owe allegiance to those who want our government to serve them, and not the people.

When one is aware of this fact, we can begin to understand how tens of millions of our taxpayer dollars have not only been mismanaged but have gone into the pockets of privatizers and profiteers. For many years, our legislature has passed and supported laws that do not allow accounting or transparency for how taxpayer public dollars are spent by charter schools. They have also done away with conflict of interest rules that would make it a criminal offence for legislators to use public money and position for personal gain. In addition, they have done away with democratically elected schools boards in favor of private corporate boards to oversee charter schools. Real public schools have elected school boards. But those who control the legislature have eliminated the tools of transparency and accountability that protect our investment in public education from being siphoned off from the needs of children and into the pockets of privateers.

This has been done to our state. Captive and bought members of the legislature have created uncounted millionaires by directing our money to friends, family, and those they support ideologically. This has been done out of pure greed. Ideologically it is done to starve and damage our public schools because they are “government schools” and have not yet been privatized for profit, not for kids. These are our schools, the ones over 80% of AZ citizens want to support and improve.

These are two on the many examples of the subversion of the democratic process. Yavapai County is reported to be a Republican stronghold. Some say people here always voted a straight “R” ticket. That may have been true years ago. Today Yavapai County is not Republican or Democrat or Independent. The citizens of this county have learned that the state government is not GOP, but rather a Koch, Goldwater Institute, APS, ALEC assembly of people who often describe themselves a Libertarians, which roughly translated means, ‘We have the right to rape, rip, and run if it serves us. We have the right to access for our personal gain the taxes citizens pay. We believe in privatizing all public resources, including prisons, schools and government functions.’ If one votes a straight “R” ticket what they are getting is a “Koch” ticket. Times have changed and now the legislature and governor are owned by forces that serve only themselves. Too often our politicians dance with the ones who ‘brung’ them.

So how do we win back the respect of other Americans and our decency as a people?

#1 We identify the legislators and political leaders that are owned by outside forces. We do this by examining their voting records and red tag all who have voted for laws that restrict financial accountability, shield members from conflicts of interest, and favor those who profit from privatizing prisons, schools, and public services.

#2 We share our information, educate our friends and neighbors, and support candidates that, regardless of political party affiliation, represent us and our community.

#3 We vote after vetting the candidates.

 

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Citizenship, Civics, Dark Money, Democracy, Koch Brothers

The Guardian: Secret Rightwing Strategy Guide to Discredit Teacher Strikes

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2018 //
14

 

The Guardian published a document prepared by a rightwing group that offers messaging advice to states about how to undercut teacher strikes. 

Peter Greene reviewed the “messaging guide” here. He writes: “The ‘messaging guide’ is only three pages long, but it includes specific ideas about how to fight back against these crazy teachers and their desire to be paid a decent wage and also work in decent facilities.”

The Guardian writes:

“The “messaging guide” is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 rightwing “ideas factories” that span every state in the nation. SPN uses its $80m war chest – funded by billionaire super-donors such as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that flows from the Walmart fortune – to coordinate conservative strategy across the country.

“Another financial backer of SPN is the billionaire DeVos family of the Amway empire. Betsy DeVos is the current education secretary in the Trump administration.

LSPN’s previous campaigns have included a plan to “defund and defang” public sector unions. Now it is turning its firepower on the striking teachers.”

It doesn’t suggest an attack on collective bargaining because all the affected states are already “right to work.”

It doesn’t suggest attacking unions because not only are these states “right to work,” but the leadership of the strikes is grassroots.

It does say that state leaders should emphasize that children were being hurt, especially poor children. (So touching to hear this from rightwingers who fight the minimum wage and the expansion of Medicaid, which hurts the families of poor kids as well as the poor kids, ).

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Dark Money, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Propaganda, Resistance

Billionaire Secretary DeVos Rips Poorly Paid Oklahoma Teachers for Failure to “Serve the Kids”

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2018 //
36

Billionaire Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who never worked a day in her life for pay until she was named Secretary of Education by Trump and who never had to worry about paying a mortgage or a meeting a car payment, lashed into Oklahoma teachers for their failure to end their strike and get back to work “serving the kids.”

No doubt her butler and her chauffeur are paid more than the average teacher in Oklahoma, even without a college degree.

Her criticism will  likely stiffen the spines of striking teachers.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Oklahoma, Teacher Pay, Teachers

Stock Tips for the DeVos For-Profit Education Era

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2018 //
13

 

The business media recognize that Betsy DeVos is changing federal policy to make room for for-profit education, both for K-12 charters and for higher education. She is rolling back regulations intended to curb the excesses of predatory for-profit “colleges,” known for preying on and exploiting veterans, the poor, and unwary students.

So here is a business analysis of the stocks that are soaring with the expectation that the DeVos is great news for educationally unsound for-profit colleges.

The basic story is that DeVos’ Department of Education has made clear that it sides with the predators, not the prey. Students will continue to be cheated. DeVos doesn’t care.

For-profit charters and for-profit virtual charters and for-profit higher education strike me as morally reprehensible. They may make money for investors, but they are educationally bankrupt.

By it’s nature, the for-profit corporation owes its first duty to investors, not students. It must turn a profit or go belly-up. Thus, it must cut costs, and the easiest way to do this is to cut the cost of teachers by hiring inexperienced teachers and giving them large classes. They are also incentivized to seek the easiest to educate students and avoid expensive ones who need extra attention.

Many of the for-profit charters are trying to cut costs by putting kids on computers. They call it “blended learning” or use the oxymoron “personalized learning.” But it is cheap education no matter what you call it.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

GAO Reports That Black Students Receive Disproportionate Discipline

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2018 //
29

 

 

This was posted by Politico Morning Education.

I don’t know which outrages me more:

1) the administration’s efforts to link the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to the Obama guidelines that sought to reduce disparate punishment based on race. As Politico points out, there is no evidence to connect the Obama guidelines with the shooting.

2) the statement that Betsy DeVos opened every meeting yesterday with an acknowledgement of the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the suggestion that she was engaged in fulfilling his life’s work. What Chutzpah! She has been trying to slash the budget of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and appointed a woman to run it who is opposed to its mission.

Politico writes:

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE GAO’S SCHOOL DISCIPLINE REPORT: The GAO released fresh evidence Wednesday that black students, boys and students with disabilities are all disproportionately disciplined in the nation’s public schools. The report, based on data from the 2013-14 school year, comes as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos mulls a repeal of Obama-era discipline guidance aimed at curbing such disparities. The numbers in the report are jarring. Black students by far bear the brunt of every type of discipline – from in-school suspensions to expulsions and school-related arrests. For example: While black students accounted for 15.5 percent of all public school students, they represented about 39 percent of students suspended from school. Here are some of the key takeaways:

– Boys overall were more often disciplined than girls, but the pattern of disproportionate discipline affected both black boys and black girls – the only racial group for which both sexes were disproportionately disciplined in every way: In-school and out-of-school suspensions, expulsion, corporal punishment, referral to law enforcement and school-related arrests.

– Minority students with disabilities are hit especially hard. Nearly a quarter – 23 percent – of black students with disabilities were suspended from school. More than 20 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native students with disabilities were suspended from school. More than 25 percent of students who identify as two or more races and have disabilities were suspended.

– Poverty is a factor: The GAO found that when there were greater percentages of low-income students in a school, there were generally significantly higher rates of all types of discipline. But black students, boys and students with disabilities were still disciplined disproportionately, regardless of the level of school poverty. And, as was the case in every type of school, black students bore the brunt of it. In high-poverty schools, they were overrepresented by nearly 25 percentage points in suspensions from school, according to the report.

– The disparities can be a drag on the economy . The GAO report notes that research has shown that students who are suspended from school are less likely to graduate on time and more likely to drop out and become involved in the juvenile justice system. “The effects of certain discipline events, such as dropping out, can linger throughout an individual’s lifetime and lead to individual and societal costs,” the report said. It pointed to one study of California youth that estimated that students who dropped out of high school because of suspensions would cost the state about $2.7 billion. Another study the GAO referenced estimated that Florida high school students who drop out earn about $200,000 less over their lifetimes.

MEANWHILE AT ED: DeVos is considering scrapping Obama-era school discipline guidance meant to curb racial disparities. The secretary on Wednesday heard from both supporters and opponents of the guidance, according to meeting participants from two separate closed-press listening sessions. Nathan Bailey, a department spokesman, said that no policy decision has been made on the guidance. He added that the department has held 11 other listening sessions on the topic. Wednesday’s discussions were the first in which DeVos has taken part, Bailey said.

– DeVos opened each of the meetings by noting the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and highlighting the continued need to achieve the full realization of his life’s work, the department said. “She discussed the clear problem, revealed both in the data and in the stories told, of disparate treatment in discipline,” according to a department readout. “She welcomed the participants to share their perspectives on how to best protect all students’ civil rights and promote positive school climates, and asked how the current approach is helping or hurting those efforts.” Mel Leonor has the full story.

– View details about the meeting and participants here. In a statement after the meeting, the department said: “At the request of many of the participants, the sessions were closed to the press to protect the identities of participants who fear retaliation, are in active litigation or shared deeply personal stories involving family members and/or minors. Each session took place in the Secretary’s Conference Room to foster a candid exchange between the Secretary and stakeholders who presented varying perspectives on how school discipline policies should or should not change.”

– Repeal of the guidance has been under consideration for months, but interest in it was renewed following the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead. Some congressional Republicans have said the Obama-era school discipline policies contributed to law enforcement’s failure to identify and stop the school shooter. The White House targeted the guidance for repeal in its school safety plan – making it a key focus of the school safety commission created by President Donald Trump and chaired by DeVos. But as POLITICO reported last month, there’s no evidence to suggest that those policies had anything to do with the massacre in Parkland.

– The GAO report provides evidence that the guidance should remain in place, said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Scott and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, requested the GAO investigate school discipline. The report “dispels claims that racially disproportionate rates of discipline are based solely on income,” Scott said in a statement. “This report underscores the need to combat these gross disparities by strengthening, not rescinding, the 2014 Discipline Guidance Package, which recommends specific strategies to reduce the disparities without jeopardizing school safety.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Discipline and Suspensions

Arizona: Koch Brothers Lose in Court, Seek to Quash Referendum Against Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
7

Parents and teachers in Arizona gathered over 100,000 signatures to force a referendum on the unlimited expansion of vouchers. The Koch brothers and the DeVos family are pushing for vouchers, and they sent in their top legal team to try to stop the referendum. They are terrified of democracy.

They fought the referendum in court and they lost. The parents and teachers won. The referendum was going forward.

Now they have a new trick up their sleeve. The masters of dark money will get the legislature to repeal the original bill and re-enact it, so as to block the referendum. The SOS Arizona team will have to start all over, by gathering signatures for a new referendum and hiring lawyers to defend the referendum.

The Koch brothers and the DeVos family are hereby added to the blog’s Wall of Shame. They hate public schools and they hate democracy.

Please send a contribution to SOS Arizona to help them continue the fight for public schools!

This came in today from SOS Arizona:

Just when we thought we were safe…They’re at it again. Within 2 weeks of the Arizona Supreme Court’s dismissal of the dark-money lawsuit brought against SOSAZ, the Legislature is preparing to repeal Prop 305 entirely or replace it with another ESA expansion bill. 

From the moment we turned in 111,540 signatures last summer, voucher supporters have been scheming to “bait and switch.” Especially since polls have indicated that Prop 305 will likely be defeated if voters have their say. Voters know that vouchers hurt our schools, our kids, and our state.

Bottom line–the state with the WORST funding for schools should be the LAST state to divert public funds to private schools.

How can you help ensure that Prop 305 will get to the ballot so we can defeat the voucher expansion once and for all?

  • Call Governor Ducey’s office at 602-542-4331 and say you oppose any voucher expansion replacement bill;
  • Contact your representatives and senator now to let them know any replacement bill is unacceptable. Hint: here is how they voted on the original voucher expansion bill last year.
  • Sign the SOSAZ Pledge to Vote No on Prop 305, and ask 10 of your friends to do the same;
  • Talk to 10 friends, family, neighbors and colleagues. Our passionate volunteers are our biggest allies. Help us get the word out!

Our work to protect our volunteers’ hard work and signatures does not come cheap. Please help us meet our bills with a one-time or recurring donation today.

Thank you for all you do!

Beth Lewis

Chair, Save Our Schools Arizona PAC

Categories ALEC, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Democracy, Vouchers, Wall of Shame
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