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

Trump Administration Trying to Blame School Discipline for Parkland Massacre

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2018 //
14

 

Daniel Losen of the UCLA Civil Rights Project warns that the Trump administration is trying to pin the blame for the Parkland massacre on the Obama era school discipline policies, which sought to reduce disparities between white and black students who were punished for misbehavior. Betsy DeVos is supposed to head a commission on school safety, and the Obama era guidelines are sure to be scapegoated, although it is difficult to see any connection between Nikolas Cruz and the controversial guidelines. This maneuver is a distraction, an effort to change the subject from gun control to school discipline.

Losen posted this comment last night:

“Tomorrow the House Judiciary committee will hear from Max Eden who recently joined his pal Michael Knowles in this podcast. https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/27958/ep-117-guns-dont-kill-people-schools-kill-people

“Folks need to realize that some masquerading as researchers are using every opportunity to mischaracterize the joint civil rights guidance on school discipline. The latest salvo distorts and lies about what actually happened in Broward County Florida to suggest is was leniency in school discipline, and a program intentionally trying to reduce the unnecessary arrests of Black youth for misdemeanors that lead to the murder of 17 children. Eden and his friend claim that the policy was for schools not to report such behaviors to the police. In fact the Promise Program never involved the shooter, but does require cooperation with the police and attorney general’s office so that when a non-violent misdemeanor is committed, there are alternatives beside locking up the children. Further, this program came on the heals of Broward county being the second highest in the state for school based arrests. In this interview Eden says he is trying to change the framework from being about guns to being about what he considers to be top down discipline policy. That is also a lie and is obvious to anyone who actually reads the guidance. Part of Eden’s argument is informed by his pro-charter position. He wants no part of civil rights protections for children if it means sacrificing charter autonomy. In this interview he also embraces “no excuses” approaches arguing that their communities “might not be able to give them values…” Eden’s agenda is deeper than the guidance. He is a staunch opponent of the civil rights regulations dating back to the 1960s that made unjust or unjustifiable policies and practices with a disparate impact potentially unlawful because they harmed protected subgroups of children more than others.

“I recently debated Eden before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv_GgG-igBE&t=10624s

“and more recently, debated Michael Petrilli on Education Next journal. Folks should weigh in against stripping children of the civil rights. http://educationnext.org/dont-walk-back-needed-discipline-reform-forum-losen/

“Tomorrow Kristen Harper will be on the panel with Max Eden. It will be life streamed at 10 a.m.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Discipline, Guns in Schools

SNL Portrays Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2018 //
18

 

Kate McKinnon is the most talented member of the Saturday Night Live cast (in my humble opinion). She plays Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions, Robert Mueller, Kellyanne Conway, Elizabeth Warren, Justin Bieber, and almost anyone else. She is a great mimic and a talented singer. She plays the piano, the cello, and the guitar. She is a public school graduate from a high school from Long Island.

Last night, she played Betsy DeVos, and SNL offered her the opportunity to rectify her flubbed appearance on “60 Minutes.”

Kate is hilarious, but no way can she capture the true DeVos sneer, which I think of as the billionaire sneer (“I am very very rich, but you are not.”)

Categories Betsy DeVos, Humor

Jersey Jazzman: DeVos’s Fantasy About the Benefits of Competition

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2018 //
26

Mark Weber, who blogs as Jersey Jazzman, was interested in a part of the DeVos’ 60 Minutes interview that most reviewers overlooked. She made the claim, based on “studies show” that competition with private schools improves public schools. He devotes this post to debunking that claim. 

The effects of competition are tiny. They are “not modest,” he writes. They are “tiny.”

He asks, is choice a reasonable substitute for equitable funding, and not surprisingly, concludes that it is not.

If “choice” is introduced as a substitute for things like adequate and equitable funding, the overall progress of the system will be impeded. The sad fact is that the “Florida Miracle” has been grossly oversold; the state is a relatively poor performer compared to other states that make more of an investment in public education. Can that all be attributed to policy? No, of course not… but Florida is a state that makes little effort to fund its schools.

In any case, DeVos’s contention that public, district schools see improvement when there is competitive pressure is just not held up in any practical sense by research like this. As I said in my last post, the effects sizes of things like this are almost always small. In this case, the effect is exceptionally small; in practical terms, it’s next to nothing.

The idea that we’re going to make substantial educational progress by injecting competition into our public education system just doesn’t have much evidence to support it. I wish I could say that conservatives like DeVos were the only ones who believe in this fallacy; unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Too many people who really should know better have put their faith in “choice,” rather than admitting that chronic childhood poverty, endemic racism, and inequitable and inadequate school funding are at the root of the problem.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Competition, Florida, School Choice

Rolling Stone: Now We Know: Government by the Worst People

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2018 //
15

Jamil Smith writes in Rolling  Stone that we are indeed governed by a kakistocracy (the worst people in the nation). Betsy DeVos is living proof of it. She demonstrated what a kakistocracy is when she was interviewed on 60 Minutes.

I worry less about Kim Jong-Un than I do Betsy DeVos. The North Korean dictator, for one, doesn’t have dominion over the educational futures of nearly 51 million elementary and secondary students and countless more in college. Barring a nuclear attack, of course, the wealthy charter-school champion is poised to play a much larger role than Kim will in determining the future of United States. The sophomoric invective he directs at us pales in comparison to the utter disrespect that President Trump demonstrated by nominating her to lead the Department of Education in the first place. To build a United States government of the worst people, one must not merely be amateurish. It requires a special hatred for America to form a kakistocracy…

Those who have yet to hear (or sound) the deafening alarms about this administration use words like “polarizing” rather than “dangerous” to describe Trump officials like DeVos, still nurturing notions that this president and his Cabinet can actually operate the franchise they’ve been trusted with. The reality is that the United States is now learning to live without a functional president or government. They are out of ideas, save those that feed the cultural insecurities of their base. “Infrastructure Week” has become a punchline. Puerto Rico has been abandoned, as has Flint. What makes all this worse is that this was the plan, born from Trump’s lack of knowledge, varied bigotries, and intellectual incuriosity. We Americans are on our own, and what we saw Sunday night from DeVos was only a reminder.

No, she is not stupid. She is on a mission to destroy public schools and to replace them with privately managed charter schools and religious schools. She no longer pretends that schools get better when everyone chooses. She wants choice for the sake of choice. This is not about “the children.” It is about a powerful religious ideology that overrides everyone who disagrees, as well as evidence and facts.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, School Choice

Puerto Rico: Legislators Moving to Adopt Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
36

Another victory for the Trump-DeVos agenda of school choice, this one in Puerto Rico, which is still struggling to recover from massive hurricane damage.

Politico Morning Education reports:

SCHOOL CHOICE PROPOSAL MOVES AHEAD IN PUERTO RICO: One of the island’s legislative chambers approved this week an education reform plan that would usher in charter schools to the territory and roll out a program of school vouchers in 2019. The plan was pitched by Gov. Ricardo Rossello as the island’s education system grappled with a tough recovery and mass migration to the states following Hurricane Maria. It has been criticized by teachers unions, which fear that turning over education to private entities will disrupt public schools there.

– The legislation allows for the creation of charter schools, or for the conversion of existing public schools into charters. Schools must be run by non-profit operators, and must be non-sectarian. Students from across the island would be able to participate in enrollment lotteries, though schools have to give preference to students in neighboring communities. Teachers who chose to work for charter schools in Puerto Rico would be given a leave of absence from the Education Department, which would hold their jobs for up to two years.

– Responding to concerns that Puerto Rico’s system would emulate post-Katrina New Orleans, where nearly all students attend charter schools, lawmakers instituted a cap on the number of charter schools equal to 10 percent of all public schools there.

– As for school vouchers, lawmakers are proposing a rollout in the 2019-2020 school year that would allow 3 percent of students to attend schools of their choosing – including private schools. That number would rise to 5 percent the following year. It’s unclear how much money would be granted to each student, but the legislation calls for no more than 70 percent of what is already allocated per public school student.

The lesson: If you can’t fund your schools adequately, offer school choice instead. It will intensify social and economic segregation and it won’t improve education, but it will give the illusion of reform.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

DeVos Shakes Up Department of Education Staff, Breaks Up Budget Office

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
13

 

Let’s be clear. Betsy DeVos never ran any organization other than the American Federation for Children, a lobbying group for vouchers and charters, which she funded and owns.

Now she is the U.S. Secretary of Education, overseeing a large department with many functions crucial to K-12 education, higher education, student aid, and civil rights enforcement.

She has just announced a major reorganization of the department, over the objections of the Trump Office of Management and Budget. 

Given her well-known disdain for the federal role in education and her appointment of people determined to destroy the functions of the federal agency, we can assume that this reorganization is designed to cripple the agency and introduce a new level of dysfunction and chaos.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is moving to break apart her agency’s central budget office despite objections from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

DeVos last week removed the department’s top budget official and at least one other budget division director from their posts, reassigning the employees to jobs elsewhere in the agency. Top political appointees are also taking steps to make further reassignments of staff and functions in the budget office.

The budget office has had a strained relationship with DeVos and political appointees ever since the department’s full budget request last year was published by The Washington Post, days before its official release. And the office had been blamed, incorrectly, for other leaks, several department staffers said.

As part of a sweeping agencywide government reorganization ordered by President Donald Trump, DeVos wants to break up and decentralize all of the Education Department’s budget functions. The department’s overall plan, according to an internal presentation obtained by POLITICO last month, calls for a “restructuring of how we approach policy and budget development.”

OMB officials have objected to breaking apart the department’s Budget Service, according to four officials with knowledge of the situation. The disagreement comes as OMB has green-lighted most other parts of DeVos’ proposed overhaul of the agency, two officials said.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, U.S. Department of Education

California: Why the State Board of Education Will Never Say No to KIPP

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
14

 

Expanding charter schools is the passion of Betsy DeVos.

Lest we forget, it was also the passion of the Obama administration, which spent eight years promoting the wonders of charter schools.

In the last months of the Obama Administration, with John King as Secretary of Education, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $100 million to California and to KIPP to open more charter schools. 

“KIPP Public Charter Schools and the California Department of Education have received federal grants together worth nearly $100 million to expand and start more public charter schools.

“The California Department of Education won $49.9 million to run a grant competition for charter school operators, to support nearly 500 new and expanded public charter schools.

“A consortium of the KIPP Foundation and the KIPP California Region won nearly $48.8 million over three years.

“Among schools benefiting from the award are four growing KIPP Bay Area schools: KIPP Heritage Academy and KIPP Prize Preparatory Academy in San Jose, KIPP Excelencia Community Prep in Redwood City and KIPP Bridge Academy in Oakland. Each of the schools may receive up to $500,000 over the three-year grant period for expansion.”

All that money to expand a charter chain that was first introduced to a national audience in performance at the Republican convention of 2000, when George W. Bush was nominated for the Presidency. 

Betsy DeVos will enjoy the results, but hold Secretaries Arne Duncan and John King and President Obama accountable. John King is now president of Education Trust, which supports high-stakes testing as the path to equity (which it never has been and never will be since all standardized tests mirror family income). Arne Duncan works for Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, U.S. Department of Education

Roxana Marachi: KIPP Refuses to Abide by Conflict of Interest Law, But Gets Approved Anyway

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
8

Roxana Marachi, professor at San Jose State University, writes here that KIPP refuses to abide by the state’s conflict of interest law (that’s for the little people in public schools) but won approval of new charters by the state board anyway to open two new charters, despite public opposition.

Her post contains a wealth of documents showing the failure of KIPP to enroll the same proportions of ELLs and students with disabilities as nearby public schools, as well as documents about the damage that charters are doing to public schools in California.

This is great news for Betsy DeVos!

But bad news for public schools in California, where the state board rubber-stamps every charter proposal that comes before them, regardless of the views of elected local boards.

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, California, Education Industry, Funding, KIPP Charter Schools, Privatization

Michael Feuer: Advice to Secretary DeVos on How to Save Her Tenure in Office

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2018 //
30

 

Michael Feuer, dean of the graduate school of education at George Washington University, offers Betsy DeVos tips on how to make her time in office tolerable and perhaps useful. 

This is his first suggestion.

“The most important goal of the agency is to help improve public schools.

“Americans have voted with their feet: Even after 50 years of debate, advocacy, and research into mechanisms designed to privatize education, roughly 90 percent of our kids still attend traditional public schools. The secretary’s prior efforts notwithstanding, vouchers have not been taken up by large shares of the public, where they have been tried the results have been mixed at best and the American public and the high court remain uncomfortable with use of public funds to support religious education.

”Given her need to set priorities she should focus on bettering public schools — a central institution in all our communities.”

He has five other ideas for her.

Given her long history of advocacy for privatization, it doesn’t seem likely that she will take his advice.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Privatization

Steven Singer: Twenty-One Reasons Why People Hate DeVos

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2018 //
9

 

In the course of the infamous interview of Betsy DeVos on 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl asked DeVos why she was the most hated member of the cabinet. DeVos said she didn’t know but assumed she was “misunderstood.”

Steven Singer asserts that DeVos is not misunderstood at all. She should wonder no more.

He offers twenty-one reasons why she is hated. 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »