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

Mercedes Schneider: Senate Appropriations Committee Says No to DeVos’ Choice Obsession

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2017 //
5

Mercedes Schneider reports that the Senate Appropriations Committee that oversees education pointedly ignored the Trump-DeVos proposal to turn Title I into voucher funding or to approve Trump’s sweeping campaign promise to allocate $20 billion for private school choice.

Senate Appropriations Has No Funding for Betsy DeVos’ Private School Voucher Hopes

Schneider writes:

“On September 06, 2017, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee approved a FY2018 funding bill that included no inkling of a $1 billion Title I allotment that would be devoted to Trump’s proposed private school voucher, Title I graft-in program.

“On September 07, 2017, the Senate Committee on Appropriations approved the Subcommittee’s Labor-HHS appropriations bill by a vote of 29-2. The bill must pass both houses of Congress and be signed by Trump by October 01, 2017, the first day of the federal fiscal year 2018. If the appropriations bills are not approved by the start to FY2018, then the Senate Committee on Appropriations would need to draft a continuing resolution, a carry-over piece of legislation to keep the government operating until appropriations bills are approved. (For more on the history of appropriations and the budget process in general, see this Government Printing Office publication.)

“Even though the Senate’s Labor-HHS appropriations bill has a way to go before it becomes law, one issue is clear: The private school choice latched onto by Trump and lovingly nurtured by US ed sec Betsy DeVos will not be bolstered by a billion Title I bucks.

“And it’s not just a Senate dismissal of the Trump-DeVos wish for private school choice mega funds. In July 2017, the House also bypassed Trump’s billion-dollar, private school choice funding request.

“In its remarks about the process of constructing its Labor-HHS bill, the Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee noted that its goal was to produce a workable, bipartisan compromise.

“The Trump-DeVos private school choice push was just too extreme for bipartisan agreement. Plus, the requested billion would have been used not for established Title I purposes but for funding an unapproved leech of a program.

“As Alyson Klein of EdWeek reports, The Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee directly addressed the attempt to funnel Title I funds into private school choice:

“The [Trump] administration had sought a $1 billion boost for the nearly $15 billion Title I program, the largest federal K-12 program, which is aimed at covering the cost of educating disadvantaged students. The Trump administration had wanted to use that increase to help districts create or expand public school choice programs. And it had hoped to use the Education Innovation and Research program to nurture private school choice.

“The Senate bill essentially rejects both of those pitches. It instead would provide a $25 million boost for Title I, and $95 million for the research program, a slight cut from the current level of $100 million.

“But importantly, the legislation wouldn’t give U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team the authority to use that money for school choice. In fact, the committee said in language accompanying the bill that the secretary of Education Betsy DeVos must get permission from Congress to create a school choice initiative with the funds. [Emphasis added.]

“So, if Betsy DeVos wants to use Title I money to fund her private school choice pet, she must be willing to subject her ambitions to a Congress that appears likely to award only token funding at best.”

To read the many links, open the post.

Categories Betsy DeVos

YOUR HELP IS NEEDED FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ARIZONA! Voucher Referendum Clears Legal Hurdle!

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2017 //
4

The parents and educators who gathered signatures successfully met the legal requirements–and surpassed them–to get a referendum on the ballot in 2018 on vouchers. The legislature recently passed a law to extend vouchers to everyone, removing all limitations. Arizona’s public schools are already underfunded. Vouchers, even if few apply, as is typically the case, will drain even more resources from the public schools.

The referendum will be known as Proposition 305.

According to the Blog for Arizona, quoting the Arizona Capitol Times:

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has validated 86.6 percent of a sample of signatures collected by Save Our Schools Arizona, putting the school voucher referendum on track to reach the 2018 ballot.

The majority of the roughly 108,000 signatures deemed valid by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office were gathered in Maricopa County, and now, SOS Arizona’s statewide validation average sits at about 87 percent overall.

That gives SOS Arizona a comfortable margin of error; with an 86 percent validation rate, the referendum would have nearly 93,000 valid signatures, about 18,000 more than it needs to make it to the ballot.

Elections Director Eric Spencer reiterated what Reagan announced via social media, adding that barring the pending legal challenges SOS Arizona still faces, the outlook for the referendum is “sunny.” He anticipated a notice of certification would be sent to the governor’s office on Sept. 11, the deadline for the remaining three counties to report results.

But if those counties were to report tomorrow, Spencer said, the Secretary of State’s Office is ready to certify what will be billed as Proposition 305 on the 2018 general election ballot.

Results from Cochise, Yavapai and Yuma counties are still pending.

“We feel like this validates – pun intended – everything that we’ve been saying all along,” said SOS Arizona spokeswoman Dawn Penich-Thacker.

“You don’t get rates like that by cutting corners or trying to cheat the rules, and this speaks loudly to the fact that we played by the rules, we did it right, we took incredible care to ensure every voter who signed would be heard,” she said, referring to allegations made in a lawsuit against the referendum. “At this point, the voucher proponents are opposing the voters of Arizona.”

The first of two lawsuits filed against the petitions was dropped–the one implying that the petitions were gathered by paid felons. The second lawsuit–which criticizes the signatures–is unlikely to succeed.

The voucher proponents, says another source in this story, are “coming unglued” at the prospect of facing a referendum where the public gets its say. The voucher supporters are the Goldwater Institute (Arizona-based), Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers, also known as the Kochtopus), and American Federation for Children (the Betsy DeVos creation, which should be renamed Americans for Vouchers or Americans for the Elimination of Public Schools).

This is a big win for advocates for public schools. Please go to the SOS Arizona page and donate whatever you can to help them. They are facing billionaires, and the billionaires will try to exhaust the resources and energy of SOS with frivolous lawsuits.

Give whatever you can. I have contributed. If you can send $5 or $10 or $50 or $100, or more, please do.

They need our help!!!

Categories Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Supporting public schools

DeVos Will Roll Back Obama-Era Protections for Victims of Campus Sexual Assault

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2017 //
126

In a speech at George Mason University, one of the few universities where she can speak without student protests, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced a retreat from the guidelines protecting victims of sexual assault on campus. She devoted equal time in her speech to the rights of the victims of rape and the rights of those accused of rape.

Her stance seems likely to discourage rape victims from coming forward, since doing so is already hazardous and puts them at risk of ostracism, especially when the alleged perpetrator is a popular athlete on campus.

Given that she was appointed by a man who has boasted of sexually assaulting women without their consent–just “grabbing them by” their genitals–her indifference to victims of sexual assault is not surprising.

When the subject was first discussed by the Secretary and the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Candace Jackson, Ms. Jackson said that most claims of sexual assault were bogus.

“Investigative processes have not been “fairly balanced between the accusing victim and the accused student,” Ms. Jackson argued, and students have been branded rapists “when the facts just don’t back that up.” In most investigations, she said, there’s “not even an accusation that these accused students overrode the will of a young woman.”

“Rather, the accusations — 90 percent of them — fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk,’ ‘we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right,’” Ms. Jackson said.

“Ms. Jackson later issued a statement clarifying that the conclusion was based on feedback from cases involving accused students, and even if complaints don’t allege violence, “all sexual harassment and sexual assault must be taken seriously.”

“Such comments infuriate advocates for victims and women, who have spent the last six years waging a concerted campaign to educate college administrators, and the public, on students’ rights under the law, and how to combat what some have called “rape culture” on campus. A 2015 survey commissioned by the Association of American Universities found that more than one in four women at a large group of leading universities said they had been sexually assaulted by force or when they were incapacitated while in college.”

The current stance of the Department suggests that Jackson prevailed, that is, if anyone in her Office tried to persuade her that she was wrong. She meant what she said the first time. She believes that 90% of accusations are false.

The steady evisceration of civil rights continues apace.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights

How Michigan Gambled on Charter Schools and the Children Lost

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2017 //
9

More than any other state, Michigan placed its bets on charter schools. This article shows what happened. Republican Governor John Engler sold his party on the miracle of school choice. Betsy DeVos jumped on the Choice bandwagon and financed its grip on the legislature. Although the article doesn’t mention it, Betsy and her husband funded a voucher referendum in 2000 that was overwhelmingly defeated.

The author Mark Binelli describes the mess that choice and charters have made of the state’s education system. The state is overrun by unaccountable charters, most of which operate for profit.

The damage has fallen most heavily on black children, especially in Detroit and in the districts where the state installed emergency managers and gave the public schools to for-profit charter operators.

Rich districts still have public schools.

Binelli writes:

“Michigan’s aggressively free-market approach to schools has resulted in one of the most deregulated educational environments in the country, a laboratory in which consumer choice and a shifting landscape of supply and demand (and profit motive, in the case of many charters) were pitched as ways to improve life in the classroom for the state’s 1.5 million public-school students. But a Brookings Institution analysis done this year of national test scores ranked Michigan last among all states when it came to improvements in student proficiency. And a 2016 analysis by the Education Trust-Midwest, a nonpartisan education policy and research organization, found that 70 percent of Michigan charters were in the bottom half of the state’s rankings. Michigan has the most for-profit charter schools in the country and some of the least state oversight. Even staunch charter advocates have blanched at the Michigan model.

“The story of Carver is the story of Michigan’s grand educational experiment writ small. It spans more than two decades, three governors and, now, the United States Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, whose relentless advocacy for unchecked “school choice” in her home state might soon, her critics fear, be going national. But it’s important to understand that what happened to Michigan’s schools isn’t solely, or even primarily, an education story: It’s a business story. Today in Michigan, hundreds of nonprofit public charters have become potential financial assets to outside entities, inevitably complicating their broader social missions. In the case of Carver, interested parties have included a for-profit educational management organization, or E.M.O., in Georgia; an Indian tribe in a remote section of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; and a financial firm in Minnesota. “That’s all it is now — it’s moneymaking,” Darrel Redrick, a charter-school proponent and an administrator at Carver at the time I visited, told me.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Deregulation, Detroit, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Michigan

Linda Lyon: The Fight to Save Public Education and Democracy in Arizona

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2017 //
10

Linda Lyon is a retired Air Force colonel and President-Elect of the Arizona School Boards Association.

She writes here about the forces massing against the parents and educators who oppose vouchers. Betsy DeVos’s organization American Federation for Children has jumped into the campaign, smearing Arizona’s Teacher of the Year. What a disgrace! DeVos vs. democracy.


During the last legislative session in Arizona, lawmakers approved a full expansion of vouchers to all 1.1 million Arizona students against very vocal opposition. In response, Save Our Schools Arizona conducted a grassroots petition drive with over 2,500 volunteers collecting over 111K signatures to get the issue on next year’s ballot.

To fight back, privatization proponents have recently ramped up their “take no prisoners” war on public education in Arizona with attacks on Arizona’s 2016 Teacher of the Year, Christine Marsh. According to The Arizona Republic, the American Federation for Children (AFC), (“dark money” group previously led by Betsy Devos), recently “unleashed robocalls” in the Phoenix area targeting Marsh. In a related effort, a Republican state legislator, Rep. David Livingston, R-Glendale, also filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Isela Blanc, D-Tempe, accusing her of disorderly conduct.

What is the egregious violation these women are accused of? According to voucher proponents, (during the drive to gain petition signatures for an anti-voucher referendum), both circulated petitions without a box at the top of the petition checked. The box, according to state law, is required to be checked prior to petitions being circulated, to reflect whether the circulator is a volunteer or paid petition gatherer. In Livingston’s complaint and in AFC’s robocall, Blanc and Marsh respectively, are accused of “falsifying petition sheets” by marking the boxes after the signatures were collected.

I understand the law is the law, but I’ve circulated many petitions and I can tell you that not one signatory has ever given a damn about whether that little box was checked. They don’t care who is circulating the petition, just that it is legitimate and for a cause they care about. The “box” in question likely matters to someone, but certainly not to the voting public.

Yet, AFC chose to reach into Arizona to demand Marsh “come clean on who altered” her petition. “I’m calling from the American Federation for Children with an alert about an election scandal in this district,” the call said. “Christine Marsh, candidate for state Senate, circulated a petition sheet which was later falsified and filed with the Arizona Secretary of State, a felony. Christine Marsh won’t say whether it was she or someone else who broke the law by tampering with the document. Christine needs to come forward with the truth. Christine, stop hiding behind the 5th amendment and come clean.”

Always one to cut right to the heart of the matter, Marsh told The Republic “she was ‘incredulous’ that an out-of-state special-interest group was spending money in her race 15 months before the election.”

I personally know Christine Marsh, am very proud to have had her representing our state, and understand why AFC and the pro-privatization lobby is threatened by her. Christine has taught English Language Arts for almost a quarter century and she still thinks she has the best job in the world. She is passionate about her students’ success and is a great example of the type of excellent teachers we have in our public district schools. She doesn’t do it for the money, but because she absolutely loves the students. She is also a vocal advocate for her students and public education and is not afraid to speak out to combat injustices. She is now running for the AZ Legislature (a job that will pay even less than she makes as a teacher), because she knows that is the only way she’ll have a chance at affecting real change.

Categories Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization

Sheila Kennedy: Vouchers in Indiana Encourage Discrimination

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
6

Vouchers in Indiana have been an expensive flop. Students don’t learn more. They learn less.

Worse, says Sheila Kennedy, many voucher schools explicitly ban LGBT students.

Only about 3% of the students in the state use vouchers, even though their advocates believe that everyone is clamoring for them. Sorry, they are not.

Where I disagree with Kennedy is that she refers to charters as public schools. They are not. They are run by private corporations. They open the door to vouchers. They are a form of privatization. Frankly, it is sad to see a corporation take the place of a neighborhood school.

Your local public school should not be run by Walmart.

I posted the following comment:

“Diane Ravitch August 29, 2017 at 12:02 pm

“Charter schools are not public schools, even when state laws call them that. They are private schools that receive public money. They are the first step towards full privatization. They are the Gateway to vouchers. When anyone challenges charter corporations in federal court, their defense is that they are not “state actors” and therefore not subject to state laws. The NLRB recently ruled that charters are not subject to labor laws because they are not public schools. Documentation: read my last book: “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools”

Diane Ravitch”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Indiana, Vouchers

Mercedes Schneider: Students, Faculty, and Alumni at Michigan State Protest DeVos as Speaker at Research Center Her Family Paid For!

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2017 //
31

Mercedes Schneider reports on a developing story at Michigan State University.

Students, faculty, and alumni are signing a petition protesting the invitation to Betsy DeVos as keynote speaker at the opening of a research center that her family paid $10 million for. If their petition is ignored, expect a protest. DeVos is the most unpopular member of Trump’s abysmal cabinet. It’s hard to say if she’s the most incompetent, because there’s always Scott Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, Rick Perry, Ryan Zinke, Mick Mulvaney, Tom Price, and so many others.

She writes:

“MSU PhD student, Sarah Kelly, has started a petition imploring MSU President Lou Anna Simon and MSU College of Human Medicine Dean, Norman Beauchamp, to rescind the invitation.

“The text of the petition, which appears to have been drafted on August 31, 2017– and which appears to rapidly be gaining signatures– is as follows:

“To:

“Dr. Lou Anna Simon, President, Michigan State University

“Dr. Norman Beauchamp, Dean, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine

“We, the faculty, students, staff and alumni of Michigan State University, and other interested citizens, sincerely request that you rescind the invitation to Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary in the Trump Administration, to speak at the grand opening of the MSU Grand Rapids Research Center (GRRC) on September 20, 2017.

“Secretary DeVos’ past activities have included:

· Lobbying for the privatization of the US public education system under the guise of “school choice.”

· Support for political candidates in Michigan who worked to implement her privatization plans and in the process, have slashed millions from the public education budget.

“As Education Secretary, Secretary DeVos:

· Recommends a $9 billion cut in federal education funding, including cuts to higher education, training and after-school programs.

· Supports cutting financial aid to low-income college students making it easier for private loan servicers to prey on Michigan families. The MSU College of Human Medicine already has some of the highest per student debt in the nation.

· Rolled back regulations on for-profit colleges and has made it easier for low performing for-profit colleges to defraud students.

· Refuses to limit federal education funding for schools who actively discriminate against LGBTQ students.

“The undersigned believe that Secretary DeVos’ agenda is diametrically opposed to the education and inclusion mission of Michigan State University. While her father-in-law’s gift in support of the GRRC is welcomed and appreciated, giving Secretary DeVos an MSU-sponsored platform to speak sends a message to the public, alumni, faculty, staff, students and their families, that the compromising of MSU’s standards can be easily purchased.

“Further, the undersigned are very concerned that planned protests of Mrs. DeVos’ visit will disrupt the GRRC Ribbon Cutting and distract media focus away from the celebration of MSU’s newest state-of-the-art research facility in Grand Rapids.”

Congratulations to the intelligent, courageous and appropriately outraged members of the MSU community!

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, Education Reform, Michigan, Privatization

DeVos Hires Former Dean of For-Profit “University” to Police Fraud in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2017 //
33

The hits just keep on coming!

Betsy DeVos just hired a former dean from for-profit online DeVry University to police fraud in higher education.

DeVry was forced to pay $100 million for defrauding students.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud

Example: When the Incompetent Hire the Malevolent

By dianeravitch
August 31, 2017 //
18

Which is the incompetent? Which is the malevolent? Or are they both? Neither is qualified by experience or temperament for the jobs they hold. This story was posted on the Politico website:


The controversial attorney who runs the Education Department’s civil rights division cited her work attacking Bill and Hillary Clinton at the top of her resume when she applied to work for President Donald Trump, according to a copy of the document obtained by POLITICO.

Candice Jackson, who brought a group of women who had accused President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct to a presidential debate last year between Trump and Hillary Clinton, listed that event as one of her “top five qualifications” for working in the administration.

At the Education Department, Jackson has taken a prominent role helping Education Secretary Betsy DeVos shape federal policy pertaining to protections for transgender students and the handling of campus sexual assault cases. She drew fire in June for telling The New York Times that 90 percent of campus sexual assault cases “fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk.'”

On her resume, Jackson noted that she had steadfastly attacked Hillary Clinton’s “lifelong corruption and hypocritical claim to defend women and children” in ads and videos and brought a “unique perspective due to also being a gay Republican.”

Jackson joined the Education Department in the spring.

POLITICO obtained the resume from American Oversight, a watchdog group that acquired it using a Freedom of Information Act request. It’s not clear whether the document was submitted directly to the Education Department or by another means, such as to the Trump transition team.

Melanie Sloan, senior adviser at American Oversight, said Jackson’s hiring is an example of Trump’s “clear pattern of filling important roles in his administration with ideologues and political hacks.

“Nowhere is this more evident than at the Department of Education, where Secretary DeVos — despite a total absence of experience in management or education policy — now oversees thousands of employees and over $60 billion in taxpayer money,” Sloan said.

When reached by telephone, Jackson referred questions to the Education Department’s press office, which did not respond to questions.

DeVos has previously defended Jackson as “a valuable part of the administration and an unwavering advocate for the civil rights of all students.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bias, Bigotry, Character, Civil Rights

PDK Poll: Public Approval of Public Schools Reaches a New High Point

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2017 //
25

The Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the public’ attitude towards public schools was just released and found a striking rise in public support for public schools.

Despite three decades of public school bashing, the people who actually know public schools have a high opinion of them. The public is tired of the hyper-focus on testing and does not support public money for religious schools.

Valerie Strauss writes:

“Most American adults are weary of the intense focus on academics in public schools today, according to a new national survey, and want students to get more vocational and career training as well as mental, physical and dental services on campus. Even so, a majority of public school parents give higher grades — A’s and B’s — to the traditional public schools in their neighborhoods than they have in years.

“A majority of Americans polled also said they oppose programs that use public money for private and religious school education, policies that are supported by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. And a majority said they do not think that standardized test scores — which have been used for more than a dozen years as the most important factor in evaluating schools — are a valid reflection of school quality.

“These are some of the findings in the 49th annual PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, the longest continuously running survey of American attitudes toward public education, released late Monday. It was commissioned by PDK International, a global association of education professionals that is headed by Joshua Starr, former superintendent of the Montgomery County Public School District, and was conducted, for the second year, by Langer Research Associates of New York City. Gallup had long conducted the poll.”

Trump disparaged public schools again last week but even his supporters send their children to public schools and don’t consider them to be “failing.”

“The new poll finds that the proportion of Americans who give their community’s public schools an A grade is at its highest in more than 40 years of PDK polling. In the newest survey, 62 percent of public school parents gave public schools in their own communities an A or B grade, compared with 45 percent of nonparents. Grades go higher when parents are grading their own school — 71 percent gave them A’s or B’s. The report said that 24 percent of Americans give public schools na­tionally an A or B (with no difference between parents and all adults)…”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Opinion Polling
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »