Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
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Peter Greene: Claudio Sanchez of NPR Sends a Love Note to the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2017 //
48

Peter Greene reports on an NPR program explaining charter schools. Perhaps you thought the program would give equal time to charter advocates and charter critics. Perhaps you thought you thought the program might explain why charters are controversial. Perhaps you thought that NPR–supposedly a bastion of liberalism–might explain why Trump, DeVos, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, and every red-state governor–loves them. Or why blue-state Massachusetts voted overwhelmingly not to allow more of them.

http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/03/npr-explains-charter-schools.html?spref=tw

If you thought that, you guessed by now that none of those things happened.

Claudio Sanchez of NPR interviewed three charter cheerleaders and tossed them softball questions.

Maybe this is what NPR had to do to justify the subsidy it gets from the Walton Family Foundation.

For shame.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Media, Privatization

Who Is Trump’s Poster Girl for Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2017 //
40

During his speech to Congress last night, Teump singled out a young woman in the audience as an exemplar of the benefits of vouchers. He said:

“Joining us tonight in the gallery is a remarkable woman, Denisha Merriweather. As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.”

Mitchell Robinson, professor of music at Michigan State University, sent the following comment:

“Denisha Meriweather is not simply “an intelligent, dynamic and motivating individual whose life was changed by the school choice policies promoted by Betsy DeVos.” She’s an employee of “Step Up For Students”, a state-approved nonprofit scholarship funding organization that helps administer the very Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program she benefitted from. [My note: Step up for Students has more than $500 million in assets. https://www.stepupforstudents.org/wp-content/uploads/2012.13-SUFS-Form-990.pdf]

“Ms. Meriweather has also been writing versions of this article at least since she graduated from college in 2014. So, to date, the only job Ms. Meriweather has secured as a result of receiving her voucher is working for the organization that gave her the voucher, and trying to influence public opinion on the worth and value of vouchers.”

Why we must NOT give Betsy DeVos and school choice “a chance”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Florida, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Are Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos Civil Rights Leaders of Our Time?

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2017 //
30

The title of this post may strike you as a strange question, in light of the well-known history of the Trump Organization in discriminating against blacks who sought to rent their properties and the DeVos’s longstanding role as the antagonist of government programs of all kinds, especially in education. History in this country shows that government, not the private sector, is the most faithful guarantor of rights and equity.

Yet in his speech last night, Trump picked up on the deceptive line that we have heard from free-market ideologues for the past 15 years:

Education is the civil rights issue of our time.

I am calling upon Members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.

Joining us tonight in the gallery is a remarkable woman, Denisha Merriweather. As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.

We want all children to be able to break the cycle of poverty just like Denisha.

In reality, the true civil rights issue of our time is the fight to save public education as a public responsibility, responsible for all, doors open to all, staffed by well-prepared teachers.

Trump may have given a big boost to the school choice movement–vouchers, charters, cybercharters, homeschooling–but his embrace should be the kiss of death for those who know that his bona fides as a leader of the civil rights movement are non-existent, and that our public schools are vital to our democracy.

It is not difficult to open the public coffers and have a free-for-all for anyone who wants part of the public treasury. The for-profit fly-by-night charter schools that populate Michigan’s education landscape must have been heartened by Trump’s declaration. The basement voucher schools no doubt have dreams of public dollars coming their way. The fraudulent cybercharter operators who rake in millions in profit must be rubbing their hands with glee.

It is hard, by contrast, to build and sustain high-quality public schools in every community.

Clearly this administration has neither the will nor the heart to do what society needs. They do not intend to increase federal funding; they intend to divide it up among all who want a share. That will cripple community public schools, and they know it. The victims will be the great majority of children who are still enrolled in public schools.

The New York Times this morning blasted Betsy DeVos’ “fake history” of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, recognizing that they began not as “school choice,” but as a response to racism and exclusion.

The same editorial board has faithfully parroted the virtues of charters and school choice, and one day may have to deal with its contradictory stance.

Privately owned and managed charters do not improve public schools; they take funding away from public schools, thus disadvantaging them even further. In the name of “choice” for the few, they weaken the schools that serve whoever arrives at the schoolhouse doors.

Let’s be clear about “school choice,” at least in this country. It was born of racism in the mid-1950s as a way to evade the Brown v. Board decision of 1954. Southern governors and senators took up “choice” as their rallying cry. For many years the term itself was stigmatized because of its history.

The fact that it has been revived by entrepreneurs, well-meaning advocates, and closet racists doesn’t change its history or its purpose: It will undermine public education. It may “save” a child here or there, while most children will be lost in a free-market system of competition in which the public abandons its responsibility to provide the best possible education for all children.

We cannot let that happen. If choice were the answer, we would all look to Milwaukee as a national model, which has had vouchers, charters, and public schools since 1990. Twenty-six years is time enough for an experiment to demonstrate its worth. Milwaukee today has a public system that disproportionately enrolls the high-needs children that the other schools don’t want. It is also one of the lowest performing urban districts in the nation on the federal tests. Not even Trump or DeVos would have the nerve to call it a national model.

Our public schools need our support. Trump and DeVos are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Their sheep’s clothing is transparent. No one should be fooled by their phony advocacy for poor kids or education. They advocate for an unregulated free-market in education that will leave most children behind, especially those who are the most disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances.

They must not be permitted to destroy public education. They must be stopped: by parents, teachers, students, and everyone of us who attended public schools. In every community, we must fight for our democracy and stop the raid on our public treasury.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Resistance, School Choice, Trump

Betsy DeVos’s Multiple Financial Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
March 1, 2017 //
9

When Betsy DeVos was questioned by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensuons Committee, her financial disclosure forms had not been completed, so the Senators were uninformed in the extent of her conflicts of interest.

The Center for American Progress reviewed the documents, too late to make a difference, so that the public would be informed. It is not clear whether she will divest any of her holdings or whether anyone even cares. In the Trump era, ethics rules seem to have been suspended.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2017/01/27/297572/inside-the-financial-holdings-of-billionaire-betsy-devos/

Categories Betsy DeVos

Betsy DeVos Hails HBCUs as a Form of “Choice,” Which Outrages Leaders

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2017 //
27

Betsy DeVos released a statement praising the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) as a model of choice and hinting not to expect any new federal funds. Leaders were baffled and outraged, because HBCUs were created not as a “choice,” but in response to “no choice at all,” when black students were excluded from higher education.

“Most of the statement is innocuous. She praises black colleges. In perhaps a sign not to expect too much money from the Trump administration, she says, “[r]ather than focus solely on funding, we must be willing to make the tangible, structural reforms that will allow students to reach their full potential.” And she notes that black colleges were created when “there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education.”

“But DeVos goes on to link black colleges to the issue of school choice — a cause for which she is an advocate. “HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” she said. “They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality. Their success has shown that more options help students flourish.”

“While that summarizes the school choice argument, social media lit up late Monday with supporters of black colleges noting that the institutions were founded because black students had, in many respects, no choice. They could not enroll at predominantly white institutions in the South, even public institutions in their own states. Further, as states created public historically black colleges, they did so to meet “separate but equal” requirements, and never took the equal part of that statement seriously. Public black colleges were created with a fraction of the budgets, programs and facilities of their predominantly white counterparts. While many students did thrive at these institutions, educators there constantly decried the lack of resources (and many maintain that continues to this day).”

Social media lit up.

Slate published an article called “Insane Betsy DeVos Press Release Celebrates Jim Crow Education System as Pioneer of ‘School Choice.'”

Ben Mathis-Lilley wrote:

First of all, it sounds like a seventh-grader wrote this, which is perhaps what happens when you put someone who has never really had a real job in charge of the Department of Education. Second, this official 2017 federal government press release celebrates legal segregation (!!!) on the grounds that the Jim Crow education system gave black students “more options,” as if there was a robust competition between HBCUs and white universities for their patronage. (When black Mississippian James Meredith chose the “option” of enrolling at the University of Mississippi in 1962, a massive white mob formed on the campus; two people were shot to death and hundreds injured in the ensuing battle/riot, during which federal marshals came under heavy gunfire, requiring the ultimate intervention of 20,000 U.S. soldiers and thousands more National Guardsmen.)

But, hey, it is good that Betsy acknowledges that the true origins of school choice were segregation schools and colleges. Even if she didn’t mean to.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Higher Education

Glen Ford: DeVos, Trump, Booker, Obama: Enemies of Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2017 //
51

I am reposting this because I forgot to put in the link. Please listen. It is a lecture so you can listen while driving. I knew the late Michael Joyce of the Bradley Foundation, a very rightwing foundation, and I can confirm that he knowingly manipulated black leaders in Wisconsin to get vouchers passed.

Glen Ford, executive editor of Black Agenda Report, is a fierce critic of corporate education reform. He is equally hard on Democrats and Republicans who have sold out their schools to satisfy rightwing foundations and Wall Street.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/node/4666

In this post, he lacerates DeVos, Trump, Booker, and Obama
as enemies of public schools, who sold out their community schools to satisfy their funders or (in DeVos’s case) personal ideology.

Here is an excerpt:

“Sometimes, when ruling class competitors collide, the villainy of both factions is made manifest. Donald Trump did the nation’s public schools a great service by nominating Betsy DeVos, the awesomely loathsome billionaire Amway heiress, for secretary of Education. In turning over that rock, Trump exposed the raw corruption and venality at the core of the charter school privatization juggernaut. Only an historic tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence saved DeVos from rejection by the U.S. Senate. Two Republicans abandoned their party’s nominee, joining a solid bloc of Democrats, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker, a school privatizer that crawled out of the same ideological sewer as DeVos and has long been her comrade and ally. Booker defected from his soul mate in fear that the DeVos stench might taint his own presidential ambitions.

“The New York Times editorial board, a champion of charters, bemoaned that DeVos’ “appointment squanders an opportunity to advance public education research, experimentation and standards, to objectively compare traditional public school, charter school and voucher models in search of better options for public school students” – a devious way of saying that the Senate hearings exposed the slimy underbelly of the charter privatization project and the billionaires of both parties that have guided and sustained it.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Obama, Privatization, Trump

Staff at Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Question Her Support for DeVos and Trump

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2017 //
10

Politico wrote about a letter that the staff at Success Academy charter schools wrote to their peerless leader Eva Moskowitz, complaining about her open support for Trump and DeVos, although she publicly claimed to have voted for Clinton.

Unfortunately the article does not contain a link to the letter. If you have a copy, send it to me by email or post it here.

Moskowitz says she can’t speak out on political issues, such as the roundup of undocumented persons (which might include some of her students and their parents), but as the article points out, Moskowitz is never shy to speak out on political issues that involve self-aggrandizement.

A group of Success faculty members recently wrote Moskowitz a letter outlining their concerns about her ties to DeVos and Trump, and her silence on Trump policies that impact Success students, particularly the executive order on immigration and new deportation guidelines.

Moskowitz responded in a lengthy letter this week, writing, “I … need to consider whether it is appropriate for me to use my position as the leader of a collection of public schools paid for with government funds to advocate politically.”

A copy of the letter was obtained by POLITICO New York.

It’s an entirely new argument from Moskowitz, who has emerged as one of the most politically potent forces in national education reform over the last several years.

At home, she has been one of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s most vociferous critics, and has convened dozens of rallies and press conferences over the past three years to attack his stance on charters. Moskowitz has shut dozens of her schools for the rallies, busing thousands of children to Albany to rally for charter causes, and has asked parents to take the day off from work to attend the events. One rally, in March 2014, cost the network at least $734,000, according to a POLITICO New York analysis. She has deep ties to local lawmakers and helped influence the passage of a sweeping pro-charter bill through the New York State Legislature in 2013.

Moskowitz has testified in favor of charter schools during congressional hearings and is a regular attendee at Sun Valley, an annual private conference of the world’s top CEOs and financiers. A former city councilwoman, she has long considered running for mayor.

As the article points out, Moskowitz has been a vocal defender of DeVos and criticized those who challenged her qualifications. These were political statements.

Apparently, defending her students against Trump’s executive orders is too “political” for Moskowitz, but defending Trump and DeVos plans to hand out more money for charters is not political.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Harlem Success Academy

Mercedes Schneider: Betsy DeVos Will Use D.C. Power to Force Vouchers Down Your Throat

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2017 //
51

Here is a paradox. Congress wrote a new law called “Every Student Succeeds Act,” late in 2015, loaded with limits on the power of the Secretary of Education. Both parties were fed up with Arne Duncan’s overweening reach into every school in the nation, going far beyond what Congress intended. Perhaps they knew that all the boasting about his great successes was empty, as a recent evaluation proved.

But along comes Betsy DeVos, never having ever attended or worked in a public school, and knowing nothing of federal policy or federal programs, who has decided to impose her personal ideology on the schools of America. She knows nothing of evidence, and when it flatly contradicts her ideology, she ignores it. This is the definition of a closed mind.

DeVos wants vouchers. The research says that vouchers haven’t improved student test scores.

Mercedes Schneider says we will learn the details later, stuff like the cost. DeVos claims that every child will be able to attend the same quality school as the most affluent but she knows that no voucher will be large enough to put every student (any student) into an elite private school, that such schools don’t have empty seats, nor do they want the kids with disabilities and a host of other issues. She is peddling empty promises. Does she know it? Does she believe what she is saying?

What we do know is that DeVos’s personal desire to bust up public schools and use federal funds for vouchers has been tried for 25 years without any evidence of success. Indeed, there is a growing body of research showing that children who use vouchers may actually lose ground compared to students in public schools. If vouchers were the solution, as she insists, we would be looking now to Milwaukee and Cleveland as the lodestars of American education. Sadly, they are not. Milwaukee has had vouchers since 1990, Cleveland since 1995. Researchers pore through data looking for the promised gains. They can’t find them.

Why is Congress allowing Trump and DeVos to foist their failed ideas on public schools? If NASA were run like the U.S. Department of Education, every space mission would explode on launch.

When will they learn? Schools need well-prepared, certified educators who are able to do their work as professionals, unencumbered by the petty whims and interventions of politicians. Students need healthcare, food security, and the basic essentials of life. Students and teachers need reasonable class sizes and adequate resources. What they don’t need is disruption and the demonstrably failed policies of a rightwing religious extremist.

Tim Slekar, the dean at Edgewood College in Wisconsin, summarizes the research consensus about the effect of vouchers: Vouchers suck. http://bustedpencils.com/2017/02/busted-pencils-trending-news-vouchers-suck/

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Vouchers

Mitchell Robinson: Some Advice for Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2017 //
13

Mitchell Robinson, a professor of music education, realizes that DeVos has been off to a rocky start. He has some advice to help her improve on the job.

First he tries to explain that professors and teachers don’t tell their students what to think, they try to teach them how to think.

And he feels her pain.

Betsy, it looks like you’ve had a busy first week on the job, and aren’t letting your complete lack of experience or knowledge about public education get in the way of “getting stuff done“. In just the last week or so you…

*insulted teachers at a middle school
*bashed protesters, saying they are “hostile” to change and new ideas
*said she would be fine if the department she runs is shut down
*complained that critics want “to make my life a living hell”
*did not participate in the first Twitter chat her department had for teachers on Feb. 21
*suggested schools should be able to compensate for troubles children have at home, such as absent fathers
*had U.S. marshals protect her after protesters blocked her entrance to a D.C. school door
*made a confusing statement about the Common Core State Standards
*made crystal clear that a top priority will be pushing for alternatives to traditional public schools, otherwise known as “school choice.”

Whew. Quite the whirlwind, eh?

So, here’s my last bit of advice for you: slow down, talk to some real teachers (not those Teach for America interns the Department of Education seems to be so fond of these days), and make a real, pre-approved, planned, coordinated visit to an actual public school (not another one of those ninja-style assaults you tried to pull off last week).

When you get to that school, try this: listen more than talk; pay attention to what the students and teachers are really saying, not your own interpretation of what you think they are saying; and–most importantly–ask them how you can help.

Rolling over on your duty to protect trans kids isn’t going to make this any easier with teachers, who take their responsibility to protect their students pretty seriously, whether they are working with college students or kindergartners. But it’s also your duty to show a little humility, acknowledge that you don’t have all the answers, and work with teachers to improve all schools, for all children.

Categories Betsy DeVos

SomeDAM Poet: How to Spell DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2017 //
25

When the Trump administration put out the news that DeVos and Sessions disagreed on protecting the rights of transgender students, some were skeptical in light of the well-known DeVos family history of finding anti-LGBT organizations.

The blog poet wrote:

“DeV[i]o[u]s”

It really is quite devious
Omitting “I” and “u”
It’s absolutely mischievous
DeVos knows what to do

Categories Betsy DeVos
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