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

The Great Retreat Now Begins: Choice is No Longer About “Saving Poor Children from Failing Schools”

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2017 //
18

Do you remember back in the old days when the privatization movement began that choice was going to “save poor children from failing schools”?

Well, that slogan is now obsolete. Now the advocates say that the purpose of choice is choice, regardless of results.

That subtle shift has happened because of the many recent studies and evaluations showing that charters and vouchers do not necessarily get better results, and that they may even have a negative effect, as we learned from recent evaluations of voucher programs in D.C., Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sounded the bugle call for retreat after learning of the poor results of the latest evaluation of the D.C. voucher program, funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

In the past, she had said that choice would “save poor kids from failing schools.” Now, however, she says, “When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools.” Parents are satisfied, and that is good enough for her, even if the children’s test scores are falling. If you parse this sentence, what she is saying is that when everyone chooses, none of the schools will be better than any others. They will all get the same results, even if they are dismal. The purpose of choice is choice.

Results don’t matter. Only parent satisfaction matters. If poor kids are moved from a “failing public school” to a “failing charter school” or “failing religious school,” that’s fine. An opinion piece in a D.C. paper suggested that we should not pay attention to those studies, because critics of school choice twist their findings anyway, especially if their findings are negative.

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

Jeannie Kaplan: Denver’s Corporate Reformers Try to Distance Themselves from DeVos

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2017 //
28

Jeannie Kaplan watches with amusement as the corporate reform-led Denver School Board tries to distance themselves from Betsy DeVos.

She says, “They can run, but they can’t hide.”

You see, Denver Board of Education and superintendent, once the drip of privatization as characterized particularly by choice and charters starts, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to stop. What starts as a drip quickly becomes a flood that is almost impossible to control. You may truly not believe in vouchers, but you have fostered an atmosphere in Denver where vouchers could be the logical outcome of Choice and Charters, intended or not. And while DFER, too, tried to separate itself from parts of the Trump/DeVos agenda, it simultaneously sent out a notice congratulating “Betsy DeVos on her appointment as Secretary of Education, and we applaud Mrs. DeVos’s commitment to growing the number of high-quality public charter schools.” Further, Betsy DeVos has given money to DFER which in turn has given lots of money to DPS campaigns including the Committee for Denver’s Kids cited below. You can’t always have it both ways, and even the best public relations departments cannot always convince you of their stories.

This is a problems for all the Democrats who have cheered on “school choice,” but thought they could draw the line at vouchers. Like Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, who is a major supporter of charters. Like Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, who wants to be President and has been a major supporter of charters. Like California Governor Jerry Brown, who never saw a charter he didn’t like. Like Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who voted against DeVos, but advocates both charters and vouchers.

Once you jump on board the school choice train, it is hard to explain why you only meant charters, not vouchers.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, Denver, Education Reform, School Choice, Vouchers

Can Schools Cure Poverty?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2017 //
29

Jennifer Berkshire posted this interview with economist Harvey Kantor in response to a column in the New York Times by David Leonhardt suggesting that schools were the best way to address poverty.

Leonhardt wrote that education “is the most powerful force for accelerating economic growth, reducing poverty and lifting middle-class living standards.” He then goes on to argue that vouchers don’t work, but charters do. This runs contrary to Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie’s study of charters in Texas, where they found that attendance in charter schools had no effect on future earnings.

What Kantor has to say is crucial in this discussion.

Kantor says what I have come to believe is bedrock truth. Poverty should be addressed by reducing poverty. No matter how high the standards, no matter how many tests, no matter how swell the curriculum is, those are not cures for homelessness, joblessness, and lack of access to decent medical care. This realization explains why I changed my mind about the best way to reform schools. It is not by turning schools over to the free market but by seeing them as part of a web of social supports for families and children.

Here is part of a fascinating discussion:

One of the consequences of making education so central to social policy has been that we’ve ended up taking the pressure off of the state for the kinds of policies that would be more effective at addressing poverty and economic inequality. Instead we’re asking education to do things it can’t possibly do. The result has been increasing support for the kinds of market-oriented policies that make inequality worse.

If we really want to address issues of inequality and economic insecurity, there are a lot of other policies that we have to pursue besides or at least in addition to education policies, and that part of the debate has been totally lost. Raising the minimum wage, or providing a guaranteed income, which the last time we talked seriously about that was in the late 1960’s, increasing workers’ bargaining power, making tax policies more progressive—things like that are going to be much more effective at addressing inequality and economic security than education policies. That argument is often taken to mean, *schools can’t do anything unless we address poverty first.* But that’s not what we were trying to say.

Berkshire: But isn’t part of the attraction of today’s education reform movement, that it holds out the tantalizing possibility that we can correct the effects of poverty without having to do anything about, well, poverty?

Kantor: That’s right. What’s interesting about our our contemporary period is that we’re now saying schools can respond to problems of achievement and we don’t need to address any of these larger structural issues. When you think about these larger questions—what causes economic inequality? What causes economic insecurity? How are resources distributed? Who has access to what?—they’ve been put off to the side. We’re not doing anything to address these questions at all.

Please read the entire discussion. It is very important in understanding the attack on schools and the fruitlessness of corporate reform, which ignores the causes of poor student achievement.

It will help you understand why billionaires and right-wingers love corporate reform. It enables policymakers to forget about the necessity of social policy that affects the conditions in which many families live.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Poverty, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Is Betsy DeVos Misunderstood?

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2017 //
19

Peter Greene tries to determine whether Betsy DeVos is wrongly portrayed by the media and her critics.

She’s no dummy, he says, but she does have the misfortune of saying inappropriate things at inappropriate times.

True, she is often a punch line for late-night TV comics.

Her problem is that she knows so little about American education, almost nothing about public education, and she has only one idea: school choice. Is it her fault that she is totally out of touch?

“DeVos…holds up some Florida choicey programs as a model of excellence, which if nothing else shows once again that DeVos has not done her homework. But her praise of the Miami-Dade system shows, again, where her heart is. She does not praise it for providing excellent education; she praises it for providing lots of choice. This is the greatest danger we face from Choice True Believers– given the options of a no-choice system that provides a great education for every child, and a super-choicey system that delivers lousy educational results, they would choose the latter because when it comes right down to it, they value choice more than they value education.

“DeVos calls public schools the backbone of the system, which is, I suppose, better than calling them the spleen, but not as good as recognizing that they are the education system, and modern choice is just a flock of leeches.

“Then DeVos throws in a line straight out of 2010– “What we will not do, however, is accept the status quo”– which is a hilarious line because the status quo is, of course, a bunch of public schools being undercut and gutted, strapped to bad standards with the bungee cords of toxic testing, while charter- and voucher-privatizers hold positions of high office that they use to further attack and dismantle public education so that they can sell off the parts. The more typical reformster stance is to rail against schools that haven’t existed for decades, but since DeVos has no real frame of reference for public schools, she can cast back even further. DeVos throws out the old saw about public education being stuck in the 19th century which only makes sense if you’re someone who has spent no real time in a public school.

“Technology! she declares, and you might think that this is, again, because she hasn’t been in public schools to see that we actually have them new-fangled computer machines, but it turns out that she has particular tech in mind:

“Today, it’s possible for every student to learn at their own pace, with responsive technologies advancing them through topics they’ve already mastered and delving deeper into areas where they’re struggling.

“So, competency based education, or personalized learning, or computerized training modules for the underclass, or whatever we’re calling it this week.

“She also thinks it’s foolish to assign schools based on where you live, which is another way of saying that’s it’s foolish to let a community organize, maintain and run its own schools. Having previously failed metaphorical framing by suggesting that education should be a Uber, DeVos now compares schools to banks and video rental stores, neither of which need bricks and mortars any more, and both of which are totally like public education. Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves.

“DeVos frames these ideas as necessary because (again harkening back to the 2010 reformster playbook) we are falling behind our economic competitors in the world, because having students who score better on standardized tests would totally make up for having someone in the White House who keeps discovering that governmenty things are hard.”

But, but, but, it’s all about the kids! Of course!

“As I said– any shred of sympathy I might have felt for DeVos is pretty much shredded when she starts talking. Is she occasionally criticized unfairly? Yes, I think she is. But is she misunderstood, with her policy goals unfairly maligned and misrepresented? I think not. We have a person in charge of our nation’s public education system who does not value that system and would happily preside over its destruction, a dismantling she has worked for her entire adult life and never disavowed.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Privatization, School Choice

L.A.: DeVos Was in Town When She Canceled School Visit

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
17

According to her press office, Betsy DeVos was supposed to visit the CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger charter school in Woodlands Hills in Los Angeles on May 1. But she canceled unexpectedly the day before, citing a schedule conflict.

I assumed she was called to meet with Trump or had a family emergency that kept her in D.C. Those things happen.

But according to the ED website, she was in Los Angeles on May 1.

Here is her schedule:

Monday, May, 1

12:15 p.m.
Secretary DeVos participates in the Lunch with Education Leaders at the Milken Institute Global Conference
Los Angeles, CA
Closed press

2:30 p.m.
Secretary DeVos participates in a conversation moderated by Lowell Milken at the Milken Institute Global Conference
Los Angeles, CA
Please contact the Milken Institute for additional guidance and access

Obviously she preferred to attend a closed door meeting with the billionaire Milkens, who started the failing K12 Inc. cyber charter chain.

Maybe she was afraid of protests. The word about her scheduled visit was spread to Indivisible groups on social media.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-betsy-devos-visit-los-angeles-20170428-story.html

Too bad she didn’t visit the school. Its specialty is integrating children with special needs into all classrooms. DeVos had a chance to learn. Although she probably would have taken away confirmation of her prior belief that school choice is best for everyone, and remain unaware that many charters exclude children with disabilities and voucher schools are not required to abide by federal law protecting them.

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Special Education

Mother Jones: DeVos’ Favorite “Reform” Gets Horrible Grades

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
18

Edwin Rios of Mother Jones writes here about the dreadful evaluations on Betsy DeVos’ favorite form of school choice: Vouchers.

Researchers used to find that students who received vouchers saw little or no difference in their test scores.

Now a new body of research is reporting that students (who enter the program with low scores) actually lose ground when they transfer to a voucher school.

We had seen these discouraging reports before about Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio.

Now the latest study from D.C. reaches the same conclusion. Students are negatively affected by switching from a public school to a voucher school.

The logic seems clear. The public school has experienced and credentialed teachers. Many voucher schools do not.

School choice advocates (aka reformers) used to claim that they were “saving poor kids from failing schools.”

DeVos, however, told the Washington Post that when the choice movement is fully implemented, all three sectors (public, charter, and voucher) will have the same results. “When school choice policies are fully implemented,” she said, “there should be no differences in achievement among the various types of schools.”

In other words, the children who are now low-performing will continue to be low-performing, and all three sectors will have the same outcomes they have now.

Remind me of the reason for school choice?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Failure, School Choice, Vouchers

James Meredith to Trump: Please Don’t Claim the Mantle of Civil Rights When You Betray Its Purpose

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
14

In a recent article, civil rights icon James Meredith expressed his frustration with Trump and DeVos claiming that education is “the civil rights issue of our time” and that school choice is the remedy.

He writes:

Today, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are attempting to improve our schools with “school choice,” vouchers, charter schools, cyber-charters, privatization, putting uncertified “temp teachers” with six weeks training into our highest-needs schools, and shackling public schools to the mass standardized machine-testing of children.

This represents a doubling-down on a quarter-century of failed bipartisan efforts at education reform, few of which have a track record of success, even when measured by the dubious metric of standardized test scores. The achievement claims of Potemkin-style “miracle schools” rarely stand up to serious scrutiny. Education is an exquisitely difficult and complex system, and there are few magic bullets, quick-fixes or shortcuts….

The main problems in American public education are poverty, decades of neglect and segregation of our high-poverty schools, and a system that is today driven not by parents and teachers but by politicians, bureaucrats, ideologues and profiteers with little if any knowledge of how children learn.

The education system has been hijacked by money, much of which is being squandered. We are wasting tens of billions of dollars annually on failed experiments, bloated bureaucracies, unproven and unnecessary technology products, and ineffective teacher professional development. A dystopian culture of constant, pointless, mass standardized machine-testing of children is crippling the schools and students it is supposed to help. The continuation of these trends threatens to hollow out and destroy our urban schools, and pull the rest of the system down with them.

Meredith goes on to explain what children today need, and what would constitute genuine reform in education.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

DeVos Cancels Charter School Visit to Los Angeles! Sad!

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2017 //
35

Only hours after the U.S. Department of Education put out a press release announcing Betsy DeVos’ visit to the Schwarzenegger Charter School, the visit was suddenly canceled.

Wonder why? The L.A. school board election is coming up soon. California doesn’t like Trump or DeVos. Would her appearance create a problem for the pro-charter candidate Nick Melvoin and the California Charter School Association? Did Eli Broad ask her to postpone her visit until after the election to avoid embarrassing the pro-charter forces who call themselves Democrats? This might not have been the right moment to have DeVos appear in Los Angeles lauding the glories of charters.

Here is the latest press release:

From: “U.S. Department of Education” <ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com>
Date: April 30, 2017 at 3:55:39 PM PDT
To:
Subject: UPDATED ADVISORY: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ Visit to CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School
Reply-To: ed.gov@public.govdelivery.com

[US Department of Education]

MEDIA ADVISORY
EVENT DATE: May 1, 2017
Contact: Press Office
(202) 401-1576 or elizabeth.hill@ed.gov

UPDATED ADVISORY: U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ Visit to CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School

Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ visit to CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School has been cancelled.

For more information, please contact Liz Hill, elizabeth.hill@ed.gov

Categories Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Los Angeles

DeVos Will Visit a Charter School in California Tomorrow: May Day!

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2017 //
10

Betsy DeVos will visit a charter school in Woodland Hills tomorrow.

On Monday, DeVos is slated to tour the CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School, a charter school in Woodland Hills.

Monday also happens to be May Day, and labor and community groups throughout the region are planning major protests.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, head of the Los Angeles teachers union, put out this statement:

“The timing raises questions. Los Angeles is poised for a record-breaking May Day march to resist the Trump/DeVos agenda, and to stand up for human rights and educational justice. Rather than support families and communities who march for immigrant rights and public schools, she visits a charter school, in School Board District 4. Either she is tone deaf to the educational needs of our community, or more likely, she is actively promoting her privatization agenda here in LA. With her well-known collaboration with wealthy corporate charter school backers in LA, it also begs the question: Is she here to support the charter lobbyists’ endorsed candidates, Nicholas Melvoin and Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez?”

Perhaps the California Charter Schools Association will organize a demonstration to welcome her and thank her for her contributions to the charter industry.

Categories Betsy DeVos, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Julian Vasquez Heilig: The Eight Questions Betsy DeVos Will Never Answer About Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2017 //
8

Julian Vasquez Heilig dissects the claims about vouchers by posing eight questions about vouchers that Betsy DeVos cannot or will not ever answer.

First is, where did the idea come from? Well, there is that famous essay by libertarian economist Milton Friedman in 1955, but there is also the advocacy of Southern politicians following the Brown decision. Friedman had the idealistic belief that parents should spend their education voucher in any school. Southern politicians persistently and loudly called for “school choice” as a way to preserve racially segregated schools.

Julian also asks about the international repute of the free market and mentions Chile, which has seen the inevitable segregation that follows vouchers. He might have also mentioned Sweden, which took the same path, and found not only increased segregation but plummeting scores on international tests.

Voucher advocates have noticed that research does not support their claims about higher test scores or better education so they have resorted to advocating for choice for the sake of choice.

Today we have the unprecedented phenomenon of a U.S. Secretary of Education who advocates for a policy that will produce ever higher levels of segregation. This is wrong.

Categories Betsy DeVos, International, Segregation, Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »