Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
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How Jeb Bush and His Foundation for Educational Excellence Profited Their Corporate Sponsors

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
31

This is not a new article but it remains timely and worthy of your attention.

Jeb Bush runs an organization called the Foundation for Educational Excellence. Betsy DeVos was a member of his board. FEE receives corporate contributions. It works closely with ALEC, the rightwing corporate-sponsored organization that lobbies for charters, vouchers, and against teachers’ unions and tenure.

In the Public Interest was able to obtain a trove of emails that revealed the influence of FEE in several states, including Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Rhode Island.

The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bush’s agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who can’t read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the new commissioner of Florida who got the job after Indiana voters rejected his Bush-style reforms last November and tossed him out of office.

Donald Cohen, chair of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible for contracting in the public sector, said the e-mails show how education companies that have been known to contribute to the foundation are using the organization “to move an education agenda that may or not be in our interests but are in theirs.”

He said companies ask the foundation to help state officials pass laws and regulations that make it easier to expand charter schools, require students to take online education courses, and do other things that could result in business and profits for them. The e-mails show, Cohen said, that Bush’s foundation would often do this with the help of Chiefs for Change and other affiliated groups.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization, Testing

Mike Klonsky: What Was Gained by Randi’s Visit with Betsy?

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2017 //
23

Mike Klonsky says: Nothing.

You cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2017/04/randis-school-visit-gambit-with-betsy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+mikeklonsky+(SmallTalk)&m=1

Categories Betsy DeVos

In the Public Interest: Why the Trump-DeVos Choice Agenda Won’t Work

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2017 //
15

Donald Cohen, executive director of the nonprofit group In the Public Interest, wrote the following (co-posted in Huffington Post):

Conservatives seem to have a thing for fast food.

The founder of what would eventually become the country’s largest private prison corporation, CoreCivic (formerly CCA), once declared, “You just sell [private prisons] like you were selling cars or real estate or hamburgers.” More recently, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, an organization founded by Jeb Bush that has lobbied for its corporate funders, including the world’s largest education corporation, Pearson, wrote that public schools should be thought of as fast food restaurants.

But providing public goods and services is nothing like selling hamburgers. In a democracy, human beings should control the public schools, infrastructure, and social services in their communities. Fast food customers vote individually with their wallets, which means they really have very little say. Does anyone really want a handful of corporations, the likes of McDonalds and Burger King, teaching children and locking people up in prison?

This point is especially true of public education, and is driven home by a report we released last week authored by Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Lafer found that taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter school buildings in California, yet the state has little to show for it.

In the past 15 years, charter schools, which are privately operated, have received $2.5 billion in tax dollars or taxpayer subsidized financing to lease, build, or buy facilities. Yet much of this investment has gone to schools built in neighborhoods that don’t need them and schools that perform worse—according to charter industry standards—than nearby traditional public schools. Taxpayers have provided California’s underperforming charter schools—an astounding three-quarters of all the state’s charter schools!—with an estimated $750 million in direct funding.

Public support has even gone to California charter schools that discriminate against students with poor academic records, limited English-speaking skills, or disabilities. Taxpayers have given a collective $195 million to the 253 schools found by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) in August 2016 to have discriminatory enrollment policies.

Most alarming is the fact that much of the funding has gone to a handful of large charter school chains, and some have used the money to purchase private property. In Los Angeles, for example, the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools network of charter schools has used subsidiary corporations to build a growing empire of privately owned real estate now worth in excess of $200 million. State and federal taxpayers have given Alliance more than $110 million in support, yet, because of a loophole, the schools built with these funds will never belong to the public.

Simply put, California’s leaders are treating schools like fast food restaurants. Local school boards, who are democratically elected, have little say in whether a new charter school is good for their community’s students. The boards charged with authorizing new charters aren’t allowed to consider the impacts on existing public schools—or whether a school is even needed. On top of that, state and federal taxpayers are subsidizing failing and discriminatory charter schools to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

California needs common sense regulation that returns decisions about charter schools to local school districts. Short of that, the state is slowly handing the keys to its public education system over to the charter school industry and the likes of Donald Trump and new education secretary Betsy DeVos, who are pushing the “school choice” narrative.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

Stuart Egan: Betsy DeVos IS the Status Quo

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2017 //
17

Stuart Egan, a high school teacher in North Carolina, notes that Betsy DeVos relies on two rhetorical strategies: 1. Pleasant (and meaningless) platitudes; 2. A decided opposition to “the status quo.” She, who insisted at her Senate hearing on being called Mrs. DeVos wants to disrupt traditional public schools, not charters or religious schools.

She loves “great schools.”

She likes schools that “put children first.”

Platitudes.

Calls for disruption.

Who knew that conservatives believed in destroying traditional institutions?

Egan writes:

“Ironically, the conversation about changing the “status-quo” in public education has been fueled more by the business world and politicians who have been altering the terrain of public education with “reforms.”

“A Nation at Risk, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Every Student Succeeds Act, Common Core, SAT, ACT, standardized tests, achievement gap, graduation rates, merit pay, charter schools, parent triggers, vouchers, value added-measurements, virtual schools, Teach For America, formal evaluations – there are so many variables, initiatives, and measurements that constantly change without consistency which all affect public schools and how the public perceives those schools.

“If there is any “status quo” associated with the public schools, it’s that there are always outside forces acting on the public school system which seek to show that they are failing our kids.

“DeVos is one of those forces.

“That’s the status quo that should not be accepted.”

Categories Betsy DeVos

Jeff Bryant: Betsy DeVos Doesn’t Care About Civil Rights

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2017 //
11

The U.S. Department of Education has been a major force in protecting the civil rights of students and promoting desegregation.

But, writes Jeff Bryant, these issues do not seem to be part of Betsy DeVos’s agenda. Nor are they a high priority for Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department.

He writes:

“So far, Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has sent numerous signs she is assembling a staff and laying down a policy mindset that seems indifferent – if not outright averse – to the needs of nonwhite students.

“DeVos has taken the helm of federal education policy at a time when black and brown school children and youth critically need leaders in the federal government to address their needs.

“The number of Latino, African-American, and Asian students in public K-12 schools passed the number of non-Hispanic whites over two years ago. Nevertheless, schools have become more racially segregated than they were 40 years ago.

“The weight of research evidence shows when schools are racially and socioeconomically integrated, all students – even the white kids – benefit academically and in their social and emotional capabilities. Yet, without strong federal leadership, states and local districts generally shirk their responsibilities to enforce school integration.

“Racial segregation is not the only problem nonwhite students confront in schools. Students of color in our nation’s schools are disproportionally more apt to receive out-of-school suspensions than their white peers, which significantly raises their tendency to eventually get entangled in the criminal justice system. A recent report from the Center for Popular Democracy found that in New York City alone these punitive school discipline programs cost the city more than $746 million annually.

“How may we expect a DeVos administration to step up to address these challenges?

“As I reported shortly after her nomination, DeVos has a problematic track record on civil rights, based on her actions in Michigan to promote school choice programs that significantly worsened the state’s racial and socioeconomic segregation of schools.

“In one of her earliest moves as Secretary, DeVos announced her department’s decision to end a federal grant program created during the Obama administration to encourage more diversity in schools. Experts on poverty and race had called her handling of that program “a real test of her commitment to school integration.” She flunked it.

“More alarming is recent news of how many new hires for the education department have a history of making racially offensive comments and expressing controversial opinions on efforts to level the social and economic playing field for African-Americans and other racial minorities.”

Choice promotes segregation by race, religion, and income. The more she sticks to the only script she knows, the more segregated our society will become.

To hear her and Trump speak about education as “the civil rights issue of our time” is to drown in hypocrisy.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Race, School Choice, Segregation

Betsy and Randi Visit a Rural School District in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2017 //
47

Betsy DeVos and Randi Weingarten visited the public schools of rural Van Wert, Ohio. Randi wanted Betsy to see how important federal dollars are to a good public school. Betsy went along and got a promise from Randi to tour a school of choice with her.

Education Week says the “rifts” between them remain. Yeah, a rift the size of the Grand Canyon is not likely to close no matter how many schools they visit together or how often they meet.

Betsy’s spokesperson says she is not anti-public school. She just pours millions into campaigns of state and local candidates who support charters and vouchers, not public schools.

This effort to find common ground between polar opposites strikes me as pointless. It would be like bringing a devout Orthodox Jew to a Roman Catholic Church in hopes of changing his mind, or bringing a devout Roman Catholic to a synagogue and expecting to find common ground. Or hoping that a Bosox fan would be converted by a visit to the Yankees’ dugout. C’mon!

The New York Times’ account has this perceptive comment:

“Van Wert educators said they believed their biggest threat was school choice. An expanded voucher program would be “potentially catastrophic” for the district’s finances, said Mike Ruen, the district’s treasurer.
About 400 students now take advantage of a state open-enrollment policy, which Ms. DeVos endorsed during her visit. It allows students to attend an out-of-district school and take $6,000 in state per-pupil funding with them.
Most of them attend schools in a neighboring suburb. About 20 students are enrolled in an online charter school that has a 39 percent graduation rate. And a local vocational school takes 80 percent of the funding for each student who transfers there.

“Only one private school competes directly with Van Wert public schools: a small Catholic elementary school in town that the public school system provides special education services to, mostly at no charge. A Catholic high school 15 miles away is less of a draw, but could become one if parents receive vouchers. “I don’t think people are against choice,” Mr. Amstutz said. “But when you talk about expansion, taking money away from public schools, it gives people heartburn.”

Betsy DeVos will not change her mind about the importance of giving taxpayer dollars to every family to choose a charter school, a religious school, home schooling, a cyber charter, or whatever other option they want. They can even choose a public school. To the extent she is able, she will divert federal funds away from public schools to the other choices. She won’t resist Trump’s deep budget cuts. This visit will not transform her. It will not make her more attentive to the needs of the children in public schools. No doubt, she feels sorry for them because they are in public schools.

Randi will not stop being a union leader because of visiting a non-union charter or voucher school. She won’t stop believing in the importance or value of public schools. She won’t become a supporter of DeVos’s privatization agenda or Trump’s budget cuts.

Sorry, friends, but I don’t see the point of seeking “common ground.” There is none.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Unions, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Steven Singer: DeVos Hires Critic of Civil Rights to Not Protect Civil Rights

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2017 //
20

Each day brings more evidence that the Trump administration intends to roll back the social and political gains of the past 50 years (Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society) and perhaps even FDR’s New Deal.

Betsy DeVos hired lawyer and rightwing activist Candace Jackson as acting assistant secretary in charge of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. When DeVos finds a permanent assistant secretary, Jackson will become deputy to that person. All of this maneuvering enables Jackson to avoid Senate confirmation, where even some Republicans might be uncomfortable with her record.

Stephen Singer writes here about Jackson’s opposition to affirmative action and feminism.

Steven Singer says that Jackson’s appointment signals DeVos’s strident belief in the free market. Part of her project is to negate the regulations that protect the civil rights of students. Let the free market sort things out.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights

Betsy and Randi Visit Rural School in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2017 //
32

Will Betsy DeVos have a better understanding of public schools after visiting one? Or is she measuring it as a potential charter school?

DeVos, Weingarten lay down arms for first-ever joint school visit

https://www.politicopro.com/education/story/2017/04/devos-weingarten-lay-down-arms-for-rare-joint-visit-to-ohio-public-schools-155446

DeVos, Weingarten lay down arms for first-ever joint school visit By Caitlin Emma

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and American Federation of Teachers Presidents Randi Weingarten — longtime combatants in the nation’s school wars — will converge Thursday on a small Ohio school district deep in Trump country where amid forced pleasantries, they’ll seek to score political points.

It’s a schoolyard stare-down of sortsfor the two veterans, who are making a first-ever joint visit to several public schools in Van Wert, a rural community in northwest Ohio that went overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump.

Weingarten extended the invitation to DeVos in February with little expectation the secretary would accept after the teachers unions’ concerted efforts to sink her nomination. DeVos called her bluff, perhaps because she is under pressure to show her commitment to public schools and appearing in a midwestern Republican stronghold plays to her strengths.

The condition was that Weingarten must visit a still unidentified school of “choice” with DeVos. That visit hasn’t been scheduled yet.
“These women are mortal political enemies, bent on destroying the other’s education agenda through deployment of vast financial resources,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center.

“But it’s necessary for Weingarten to find favor with the Education Department,” he said. “And it can only help DeVos if she’s seen as the secretary for all schools and not just charters and private schools.”

In fact, the joint tour allows both women to press points that are critically important to them, said several policy watchers. DeVos can show rural Republicans and Democrats that she supports all schools, not just charter and private schools. Weingarten — who once stood next to a protester costumed as a grizzly bear to mock DeVos remarks about the need for guns in schools — can show she is extending an olive branch to the secretary even as she champions public education.

Thomas Toch, an education policy expert at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and founder of the think tank FutureEd, suggested that few people in the public education sector “are still listening to DeVos and one might argue this is an attempt to address that problem.”

“Until now, she has been reluctant to say anything other than, ‘I’m for good public schools, good charter schools, good private schools.’ She repeats that frame over and over and hasn’t been willing to go beyond that. … She’s going to have to go much farther than she has to date in terms of embracing public education.”

From Weingarten’s perspective, if DeVos makes a strong commitment to public education standing next to the union leader, she might be able to say she helped DeVos soften her stance, Toch said.

Weingarten said in an interview that she hopes the trip will give DeVos a chance to learn what is working in public schools, and not just a photo opportunity. She said she also wants her to understand how Trump’s budget blueprint, which would slash the Education Department’s $68 billion budget by 13.5 percent, would hurt public schools.
“This is an area that voted for Trump, but they love their public schools and they’re really upset about the cuts to education and this polarization about public schooling,” Weingarten said. “They’re wary about [DeVos’] policies and they should be wary about her policies. They’re an attempt to dismantle, defund and destabilize public schools.”

A spokesman for the Education Department declined POLITICO’s request for an interview with DeVos. But in a written statement shared with The Blade in Toledo, DeVos said that “every parent should be able to send their children to a school that meets their unique needs, and for many parents, that is a public school. I support and celebrate all great schools.”

Kaleigh Lemaster, executive director for School Choice Ohio, a statewide choice advocacy group, said she hoped the focus of the trip would be on children, rather than a particular education option.

“We’re happy to see Secretary DeVos and Randi Weingarten visiting great public schools, charter schools and private schools because we believe that every family should be able to choose the best educational environment for their children,” Lemaster said. “This is a great opportunity for them to talk about Ohio’s schools and hopefully find agreement on what should be at the center of all discussions on education policy — the children.”

Van Wert Superintendent Ken Amstutz said he’s eager to have his school district “pull these two people together,” although he noted the Education Department has largely been in the driver’s seat when it comes to planning the visit.

DeVos and Weingarten are expected to spend the day visiting Van Wert’s high school, elementary school and early childhood center, where they’ll hear from administrators, teachers and students. They’ll hear about programs that provide students with social services and food on the weekends when they otherwise might go hungry. And they’re expected to visit with fifth graders and a high school robotics class.

Amstutz said his district has struggled financially, but he’s eager to show how teachers and students are doing innovative things with limited resources — for instance, offering a high school robotics club, which won a regional contest earlier this year.

“A lot of good things are happening in public education. I think the blinders are on and I’d just like to have her open her eyes and take a look at what’s going on,” he said of DeVos. “Maybe Van Wert will be the starting point of where this conversation takes place between Betsy DeVos and proponents of public education.”

As for the people of Van Wert, Republican Party Chairman Thad Lichtensteiger, a farmer, said he believes his neighbors will give DeVos “a fair shake.”

“Van Wert is a really conservative place,” he said. “We’re going to weigh the issues on their own merits, rather than say Trump is evil and paint anybody associated with him with that broad brush.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Ohio, Unions

Colorado Senator Michael Bennett Struggles to Distance Himself from Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2017 //
30

Colorado Senator Michael Bennett was previously superintendent of schools in Denver. There he set off the school choice frenzy and led the parade to open charters. Now he finds himself trying to explain that he is different from Betsy DeVos. He is a Democrat, one of DFER’s champions. She is a Republican, Trump’s pick as Secretary of Education. He sold out public education. She wants to privatize it. She loves vouchers. He doesn’t. She is a choice ideologue. So is he.

See the difference? Look closer. No, closer still. I know it’s hard but keep trying.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Colorado, DFER, Education Reform, School Choice, Vouchers

California: Eli Broad and Betsy DeVos Agree that Charter Schools Trump Local Control

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2017 //
100

On the day before the vote on Betsy DeVos’s nomination, billionaire Eli Broad announced that he opposed her nomination to be Secretary of Education. It was a joke. He knew that his statement was meaningless and that she would be confirmed, but he was pretending to be a Democrat. The reality is that Broad and DeVos are on the same page when it comes to privatization. He is trying to grab control of half the children in Los Angeles for privately-run charter schools, and she approves. No doubt, she wishes California also had vouchers, because in her view, you can never have too much school choice. She and Broad consider local school boards a hindrance to their plans. Results don’t matter either. Nor does segregation. Choice over all.

In response to the unfettered expansion of charters–and to the ongoing financial scandals that crop up in this unregulated sector–several bills were introduced in the legislature to rein in the charters. One of them said that local school districts should make the final decision about whether to authorize new charters. Under current law, if the local school board says no, their decision may be reversed by the county board of education. If the county board of education says no, their decision may be reversed by the state board of education. If the governor is charter-friendly as Jerry Brown is, the state board can be counted on to say yes to almost any charter, no matter how much local opposition there is, and no matter how badly the new charter will damage existing public schools, skimming its students and sucking away resources.

So a bill was written–SB808– to give the local school boards the authority to block new charters that are neither needed nor wanted. The bill was supported by the California Teachers Association. It was opposed by the California Charter School Association, the lobbyists for the billionaires who love privatization.

The bill’s author just pulled it; it will not be introduced to the Senate Education Committee. The bill’s author, Democrat Tony Mendoza, met with charter school supporters last week and had second thoughts.

No doubt, Betsy DeVos is thrilled.

How many millions or billions will Eli Broad and his friends in the CCSA spend before they admit that all they accomplished was to destroy public education?

This will be Eli Broad’s legacy: not his museum; not the buildings where he has carved his name. But his destruction of public education in Los Angeles and across the state of California.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization
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