The leader of Betsy DeVos’ Great Lakes Education Project resigned after testifying that he wanted to “shake” a public official like he shakes his wife.
Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
Mercedes Schneider writes that someone at the White House transferred the funding and oversight of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities from the U.S. Department of Education to the White House.
When I first read this, I laughed out loud. First, because this happened the day after Betsy DeV pointed to HBCUs as a wonderful example of “choice,” when they were in fact created because so few institutions of higher education would admit black students. If anything, they were created because black students had no choice. They were a refuge for black students who wanted higher education and a path to a profession in a deeply racist society.
So, boom, the HCBUs are removed from the oversight of the clueless Ms. DeV. (By the way, if you watched the Senate confirmation hearings, you know that Ms. DeVos prefers to be called Mrs. DeVos.)
But my second reaction was bafflement. The White House is the home of the President and his family. It doesn’t fund or supervise programs. Presumably, the funding will follow the program. But there is no one on the White House staff who can answer a question about federal regulations or the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
Does this mean the White House will take control of every program that one of its cabinet members insults? Will it manage the Great Lakes Restoration Project, whose budget will be cut by EPA de-administrator Scott Pruitt from $300 million to $10 million?
This is one of the nuttier developments in an era of the inexplicable.
The Good Old Days
Don’t you miss the good old days?
The days of school deforming ways?
When Arne ruled with iron hand
With Common Core and test and VAM?
And Cuomo plotted night and day
The way to make the schools obey?
And Rhee was riding on her broom
And closing schools and spreading doom?
And charter schools in neighborhoods
Were popping up like shrooms in woods
And billionaires were here and there
And all about and everywhere?
Don’t you miss reformy times
Immortalized by someDAM rhymes?
Well, good old days of yesteryear
Have never left, are still right here
The good old days were never gone
The school deform lives on and on
Russ Walsh, literacy expert, describes the Three are of vouchers: They are for the Rich, the Racists, and the Religious Right.
http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2017/03/school-vouchers-welfare-for-rich-racist.html
Russ writes:
“Our new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is rich, white, and a proselytizing supporter of the Christian religious right. DeVos is also an outspoken champion of school vouchers. These two things are not coincidences. While voucher proponents will tell you, and some may even believe, that their push for vouchers is a push to make sure all children have the opportunity to get a great education, the real benefactors of school vouchers are the rich, the white and the religious right….
DeVos claims that voucher opponents are foes of change and champions of the status quo. I hope to show that it is the voucher schemes and the DeVos’ of the world who are championing the status quo – the status quo where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer as we see happening in this country right now.
“What are the problems with vouchers? Do vouchers achieve the supposed goal of improving educational opportunity for low-income and minority children? Many have cataloged the issues, but here is a quick list with some links for further reading.
*Vouchers do not improve student academic performance
*Vouchers do not improve opportunities for low-income children
*Vouchers lead to private schools of questionable quality
*Voucher divert public money to unaccountable private institutions
*Vouchers undermine religious liberty
*Vouchers do further harm to already struggling public schools
*Vouchers enable discrimination and segregation
So why the push for vouchers? Because vouchers are very good for the rich. If the rich can sell vouchers as the cure for educational inequality, they may be able to get people to ignore the real reason for public education struggles – income inequity. If the rich really want to improve schools, they need to put their money on the line. If the rich are really interested in helping poor school children they need to invest – through higher taxes (or maybe just by paying their fair share of taxes), not unreliable philanthropy, in improved health care, child care, parental education, pre-school education, public school infrastructure and on and on. This will be expensive, but we can do it if the wealthy would show the same dedication to the “civil rights issue of our time” with their wallets as they show to harebrained schemes like vouchers.”
A nonprofit parent-led group called Fund Education Now created a fact sheet about Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit plan, which was designed to evade the state constitution’s explicit ban on using public money to fund religious or private education.
In 2006, as governor, Jeb Bush pushed through a universal voucher plan, which was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court.
In 2012, Jeb Bush led a campaign to amend the state constitution to remove the prohibition on spending public money on religious schools. The amendment was cleverly called the Florida Religious Freedom Amendment, on the assumption that not many people would oppose “religious freedom.” However, a majority of people figured out that it was an effort to make vouchers for religious schools legal, and the “religious freedom amendment” was defeated 55-45. Probably, had it been honestly named the Vouchers for Religious Schools Amendment, the margin would have been even larger.
Florida now has a large voucher program funded by tax credits to businesses that get large tax write-offs in return for funding vouchers. It is called the Corporate Tax Credit (CTC) program. It is administered by four groups, which collect an administrative fee of up to 5% for their services. The largest of the administrative groups is called Step Up for Students. As of 2012, Step Up had more than $300 million in its coffers at present. By 2014, it reported that it had assets of $439 million. The administrative fee is very significant on assets of this magnitude.
At the time the Fund Education Now brief was written, the voucher was worth about $4,500, far less than the cost of the private or religious schools available to the children of Jeb Bush and other elites. The participating schools are largely unsupervised and unregulated. Numerous evaluations have shown that students in voucher schools do no better on tests than students in public schools.
The reason for CTC vouchers: the assumption that voucher schools are cheaper than public schools, which is true, and save taxpayers the cost of educating children well.
Kristina Rizga, the veteran education journalist at Mother Jones, explains why Trump and DeVos love Florida. Although the state has a constitutional ban on the use of public money for private and religious schools, although the state’s voters rejected Jeb Bush’s effort to change the state constitution in 2012, Florida has figured out numerous DeVious ways to circumvent the state constitution and the will of the voters.
Jeb Bush is the permanent state minister of education in Florida, and he loves school choice. He does not like public schools. The state has hundreds of charter schools, many of which are managed by for-profit entrepreneurs. The head of the education appropriations committee in the state senate is a member of a family that owns the state’s largest for-profit charter chain. But better yet, for the purposes of DeVos, who is a religious zealot, Florida has a tax-credit plan that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to unregulated and unaccountable religious schools.
Rizga writes:
Tax credit scholarships provide a crafty mechanism to get around these obstacles. Tax credits are given to individuals and corporations that donate money to scholarship-granting institutions; if parents end up using those scholarships to send their kids to religious schools—and 79 percent of students in private schools are taught by institutions affiliated with churches—the government technically is not transferring taxpayer money directly to religious organizations.
While DeVos is best known as an advocate of vouchers, most veteran Beltway insiders told me that a federal voucher program is very unlikely. “Democrats don’t like vouchers. Republicans don’t like federal programs, and would rather leave major school reform decisions up to states and local communities,” Rick Hess, a veteran education policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute said. “Realistically, nobody thinks they’ve got the votes to do a federal school choice law, especially in the Senate.”
This political reality is perhaps why Trump and DeVos are singling out Florida’s tax credit programs as a way to expand private schooling options. While Trump and DeVos have not specified what shape this policy might take at the federal level, most of these changes will come from the state legislators. Republicans have full control of the executive and legislative branches in 25 states, and control the governor’s house or the state legislature in 44 states. At least 14 states have already proposed bills in this legislative session that would expand some form of vouchers or tax credit scholarships, according to a Center for American Progress analysis. (And 17 states already provide some form of tax credit scholarships, according to EdChoice.)
This perfect storm for pushing through various voucher schemes comes at a time when the results on the outcomes of these programs “are the worst in the history of the field,” according to New America researcher Kevin Carey, who analyzed the results in a recent New York Times article. Until about two years ago, most studies on vouchers produced mixed results, with some showing slight increases in test scores or graduation rates for students using them. But the most recent research has not been good, according to Carey: A 2016 study, funded by the pro-voucher Walton Family Foundation and conducted by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, found that students who used vouchers in a large Ohio program “have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.”
Businesses make gifts to Step Up for Students. They get a tax credit. Step Up for Students gets a hefty cut of the take. It currently has about $500 million to use to fund vouchers for private and religious schools that the state does not regulate or supervise. The voucher-receiving schools report attendance, but are not subject to the state standards, curriculum, or tests, and they do not report on academic performance.
Students who wanted to sign up for the Louisiana Voucher Program had to make their decision by February 24. But that was before the state released the grades for the participating schools.
Overall, the voucher schools performed very poorly, as reported by Danielle Dreilinger writing in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Please open the story for the links and for the data charts.
Louisiana parents interested in the school voucher program, which allows students from struggling public schools to attend participating private ones, had to sign up by Feb. 24. But they didn’t have an important piece of information: the most recent academic results from schools that accept vouchers.
The Louisiana Department of Education sent the 2016 Louisiana Scholarship Program performance scores to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune more than three months later than usual — on the voucher registration deadline.
Those scores synthesize test results and graduation rates to give a complete picture of how effectively private schools have educated their taxpayer-funded voucher students. Usually they are released with their public school equivalents, which came out in November.
Spokeswoman Sydni Dunn atrributed the difference to “a delay in the data verification process.” She noted that the department was two months early on submitting its annual report to the Legislature, which it also did Feb. 24.
Now in its fifth year, the Louisiana Scholarship Program lets low-income students enroll in participating private schools at public expense if they are entering kindergarten or zoned for public schools graded C, D or F. It’s the kind of program President Donald Trump is promoting Friday (March 3) as he visits his first school since taking office, and a signature initiative of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Louisiana’s long-awaited 2016 voucher data shows some improvement, to a level that is still very low.
Measured like a school district, the Louisiana Scholarship Program earned 61.4 on a 150-point scale, Dunn said. That would be a D on the state public school report card, and worse than any public school system except for those in St. Helena Parish, Morehouse Parish and Bogalusa. No voucher program earned an A.
In short, students are encouraged to leave a public school rated C, D, or F, for a voucher school that may be rated C, D, or F.
Martin Carnoy is a professor at Stanford University who has studied education systems around the world.
Carnoy wrote a report for the Economic Policy Institute about the efficacy of vouchers, or their lack thereof. The report is titled “School Vouchers Are Not a Proven Strategy for Improving Student Achievement.” Carnoy reviews the longest-running voucher programs in the U.S. and other countries and finds little evidence that they improve student achievement.
Here is his summary:
“This report seeks to inform that debate by summarizing the evidence base on vouchers. Studies of voucher programs in several U.S. cities, the states of Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and in Chile and India, find limited improvements at best in student achievement and school district performance from even large-scale programs. In the few cases in which test scores increased, other factors, namely increased public accountability, not private school competition, seem to be more likely drivers. And high rates of attrition from private schools among voucher users in several studies raises concerns. The second largest and longest-standing U.S. voucher program, in Milwaukee, offers no solid evidence of student gains in either private or public schools.
“In the only area in which there is evidence of small improvements in voucher schools—in high school graduation and college enrollment rates—there are no data to show whether the gains are the result of schools shedding lower-performing students or engaging in positive practices. Also, high school graduation rates have risen sharply in public schools across the board in the last 10 years, with those increases much larger than the small effect estimated on graduation rates from attending a voucher school.
“The lack of evidence that vouchers significantly improve student achievement (test scores), coupled with the evidence of a modest, at best, impact on educational attainment (graduation rates), suggests that an ideological preference for education markets over equity and public accountability is what is driving the push to expand voucher programs. Ideology is not a compelling enough reason to switch to vouchers, given the risks. These risks include increased school segregation; the loss of a common, secular educational experience; and the possibility that the flow of inexperienced young teachers filling the lower-paying jobs in private schools will dry up once the security and benefits offered to more experienced teachers in public schools disappear.
“The report suggests that giving every parent and student a great “choice” of educational offerings is better accomplished by supporting and strengthening neighborhood public schools with a menu of proven policies, from early childhood education to after-school and summer programs to improved teacher pre-service training to improved student health and nutrition programs. All of these yield much higher returns than the minor, if any, gains that have been estimated for voucher students.”
Carnoy published a shorter version of the report for a popular audience. He wrote an article for the New York Daily News explaining why Trump and DeVos are wrong about school choice, specifically vouchers.
He reviews recent research in plain language. Kids don’t benefit. In some places, they actually lose ground.
As I have often written in this space, if vouchers, charters, and school choice were the solution to the problems of urban education, Milwaukee would be the model district of the nation, as it has had choice since 1990. That’s two full generations of students.
He writes:
If the President and his new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, were right about choice, Milwaukee would be among the highest-scoring urban school districts in the nation. Milwaukee’s private students would be outscoring those in public schools, and students in public schools would have made large gains because of the intense competition from private and charter schools.
None of that is the case. Research over a four-year period that compared the gains of voucher and public school students in Milwaukee showed that the voucher students did no better. And it’s African Americans, who make up roughly two-thirds of Milwaukee’s student body, who are the main recipients of vouchers and also most likely to attend charter schools.
When we compare the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores — that’s the gold standard of achievement tests — of black students in eighth-grade math and reading in 13 urban U.S. school districts, black students in Milwaukee have lower eighth-grade math scores than students in every city but Detroit — notably, another urban district with a high level of school choice.
In reading, Milwaukee’s black eighth-graders do even more poorly. They score lower than black eighth-graders in all other 12 city school districts.
How many billions will we waste on this failed free-market ideology? As Carnoy points out, investing in proven strategies in public schools with credentialed teachers would have long-term benefits.
This is an alarming post. Read at your own peril.
Trump gave a shout out to the glories of vouchers when he spoke to Congress. DeVos, a religious zealot, smiled with gratification as her 30-year crusade to transfer public funds to religious schools now appears near accomplishment.
Trump pointed to a young woman who had achieved success because of receiving a voucher funded by a tax credit in Florida. Her accomplishments are considerable.
But what kind of school did she attend?
“Over the past three years, Merriweather has had the opportunity to tell her story in numerous media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, the Tampa Bay Times, and The 74 (a pro school choice media site funded by charter school and voucher advocates such as the Walton Family Foundation and the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation). She’s also been the subject of pro school choice profiles in politically conservative news outlets. And after Merriweather was highlighted at the Trump’s speech, she was interviewed by Fox News.
“None of this is to take away from the sincerity of Merriweather’s writing or the validity of her lived experience. But it needs to be noted that few public school students have had such prominent venues to repeatedly tell their success stories.
“Further, the school Merriweather attended through the school choice program Trump champions is no ordinary school.
“Religious Fundamentalism At Taxpayer Expense
“The private school Merriweather attended and graduated from is the Esprit De Corps Center for Learning in Jacksonville which she has described in testimony she gave last year to a U.S. House Committee as “a church based school, a church that I actually attended.”
“According to the Esprit de Corps website, the “vision for the school was birthed from the mind of God in the heart of Dr. Jeannette C. Holmes-Vann, the Pastor and Founder of Hope Chapel Ministries, Inc.” The education philosophy guiding the school is based on “a return to a traditional educational model founded on Christian principles and values. In accordance with this vision, each component of the school was purposefully selected and designed.”
“A significant “component” of the Esprit de Corps school is its adherence to a fundamentalist Christian curriculum. Its official listing in a Jacksonville directory of private schools describes its education program as a “spiritual emphasis and Biblical [sic] view, which permeates the A-Beka curriculum.”
“A Beka is one of the most widely used K-12 curriculum series for home schooling and private Christian schools,” Rachel Tabachnick explains to me in an email. “This includes many private schools receiving public dollars through voucher and tax-credit programs.”
“Tabachnick has collected textbooks used by voucher and corporate tax-credit schools for over ten years, including curriculum from A Beka Book and Bob Jones University Press.
“In an investigative article for Alternet in 2011, Tabachnick writes, “Throughout the K-12 curriculum, A Beka consistently presents the Bible as literal history and science. This includes teaching young earth creationism and demeaning other religions and other Christian faiths including Roman Catholicism.”
“An A Beka history text she reviews teaches that “socialist propaganda” exaggerated the Great Depression “so that Franklin Delano Roosevelt could pass New Deal legislation” and that the Vietnam War “divided the country into the ‘hawks who supported the fight against Communism, and doves, who were soft on Communism.’”
“Tabachnick quotes a fourth-grade A Beka text that celebrates President Ronald Reagan’s presidency under a banner of “A Return to Patriotism and Family Values.” In describing President Bill Clinton’s administration, an A Beka high school history text calls First Lady Hilary Clinton’s effort to overhaul health care as a “plan for socialized medicine” and describes Vice President Al Gore as “known for his radical environmentalism.”
“Christ Is History, Africans Are Inferior
“In her emails to me, Tabachnick shares excerpts from a newer edition of A Beka’s textbook on “History and Civil Government” that teaches, “The first advent of Jesus Christ to earth – His incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension – is the focal point of history. History began with God and His act of Creation. I climaxed with Gods’ act of redemption.” (emphasis original)
“In the current edition of A Beka’s 10th grade history text “World History and Cultures in Christian Perspective” Tabachnick shares with me, “modern liberalism” is described as “the desire to be free from absolute standards and morals, especially the Scriptures.”
“From this text, high school students like Denisha Merriweather learn, “The beginning of the 20th century witnessed a cultural breakdown that threatened to destroy the very roots of Western civilization. The cause of this of this dissolution was the idea or philosophy known as liberalism.” (emphasis original)
“The curriculum used by Esprit de Corps also taught Merriweather and her African American classmates about the innate inferiority of the African continent and its people.
“The textbooks teach the narrative that the people of African nations descended from Noah’s son Ham and that Ham’s descendant Nimrod led the rebellion against God by building the Tower of Babel,” Tabachnick tells me. This Biblically supported lesson is often referred to as “the curse of Ham,” which has historically been a primary justification for slavery among Southern Christians, according to numerous sources.
“In the A Beka text “History and Civil Government,” Adam and Eve are referred to as “the parents of humanity” and racial variations in human kind are described as the result of “recessive traits” due to “(1) a rapidly changing environment, (2) a small population, (3) and extensive inbreeding.”
“Current A Beka texts also falsely claim that only ten percent of the population of Africa is literate and that literacy rates may drop further because of communists shutting down mission schools,” Tabachnick tells me.”
Read the entire article. Ask yourself whether religious fundamentalism provides the kind of education that our nation’s children need to prepare for a complex world.
This just gets weirder by the minute. Are we living in the same world with these people?
Gary Naeraert is the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP). GLEP was founded and largely funded by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to influence policy and law in Michigan with the aim of promoting charter schools and the elimination of traditional public schools. The group consists of a PAC, a foundation, a 501(c)(3) group, and a 501(c)(4) group.
While giving testimony before a Senate Education Committee meeting yesterday, Naeyaert revealed that he likes to “shake” indecisive women, including his wife. It was an astonishing moment.
You can watch the video of his testimony.
Apparently he is frustrated with “the head of the State School Reform Office, Natasha Baker, a Snyder appointee.”
He wants to know why they can’t close more schools faster, and she just gives him excuses.
“I had heard of the challenges and difficulty of doing a turnaround,” Naeyaert testified. “Like, we don’t have the qualified teachers ready to work. Second, we can’t do a charter because that would make it look like we were favoring charters over traditional schools. We can’t close them because there’s nowhere to go.”
“This is — you know, I wanted to shake her, like I like to shake my wife when — every option in front of you is, you know, not possible?” Naeyaert continued, his voice cracking with emotion. “They’re all equally unattractive to you, like when I ask her where to go to dinner, she says anywhere. I say Steak-n-Shake, and she says, ‘Not Steak-n-Shake.’”
I wonder if he will get a chance to give her a good “shaking.” I wonder if she will press charges.
Diane Ravitch's blog 