Andy Borowitz writes a humor column for “The New Yorker.”
In this post, he writes about Betsy DeVos and her shaky grasp of math.
Whoever knew the name of the Secretary of Education? Whoever cared what the Secretary of Education said or did?
DeVos is a lightning rod. She won’t operate under the radar. We are watching.
Stuart Egan, NBCT high school teacher in North Carolina, has connected the dots that link reformers, the Tea Party, and Betsy DeVos.
Peter Greene actually is a plan to reconfigure American education. This is not humor or parody. The is not fake news. It is real.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-hard-rights-planning-document-for.html?m=1
The religious right has waited a long time to put one of their own in charge of the Department of Education. Now they have succeeded. Now the plan begins.
Everyone who wrote to their Republican Senator urging them not to vote for Betsy DeVos got a form letter explaining why she was an excellent choice, blah blah blah. None of them referred to the fact that hers was the most contested Cabinet nomination in history, requiring the Vice-President to cast a tie-breaking vote.
Laura Chapman, our perspicacious reader and commenter, decided to annotate the canned response she got from her Senator.
She writes:
Like thousand of others, I called and wrote to my senators in an effort to stop the nomination of Betsy Devos. Here is the last reply I received from Ohio’s Senator Rob Portman. He has dual loyalties. One is to Donald Trump. The other is to Ohio’s Governor, John Kasich who has little use for public education unless it boosts the economy of Ohio.
My reply to Senator Portman follows each of his “reasons” for supporting DeVos and his reasoning about public education in Ohio.
Rob Portman says:
Dear Laura,
Thank you for contacting me to express your views on Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of the United States Department of Education. I appreciate you taking the time to contact me. I supported Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education because during the confirmation process she committed to strongly support public education and because of her support for local control, instead of having the federal government dictate education policy at the state and local level.
Sir: Betsy DeVos did not voluntarily indicate that she has a commitment to public education. Anything resembling an expression of “commitment” had to be extracted from her and it was “voiced” only after she tried to save face. She needed to save face, having made ridiculous statements about guns for schools threatened by grizzly bears and by saying IDEA could be left up to the states. There is nothing in her resume that reflects a commitment to public education. She is the champion of for-profit education and tax-subsidized religious schools.
Portman says: I look forward to working with her to improve our K-12 public education system, make college more affordable, stand up for children with disabilities, and close the skills gap by promoting Career and Technical Education (CTE) to give young people more opportunities to succeed.
Sir: There is no evidence that she has any knowledge of what “improvement” looks like. She could not offer a coherent response to the difference between proficiency and “growth.” There is no evidence that she will stand up for children with disabilities. The school policies and practices she has promoted in Michigan allow schools to refuse enrollments of students with special needs. DeVos’s policy agenda for “Choice” means schools get to choose their students.
College affordability is an issue but there is not a clue in her testimony about how she might address that.
You imply that “promoting CTE” should be on the federal agenda and that CTE gives “young people more opportunities to succeed.” Can you cite any DeVos testimony that indicates she is knowledgeable about CTE “career pathways,” or specific skills gaps? Did she give testimony that offers a reason to believe she understands information on labor markets from the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
Portman says: “In addition, I do give some deference to the President choosing his cabinet, as I did when supporting President Obama’s nominees.”
Sir: In my judgment, deference should never override informed judgment about the qualifications of the nominee. DeVos is not just unqualified, she is hostile to public education.
Portman says: In the 21st century economy, a high quality education is critical to the social and economic well-being of our nation. I believe that the most important role in educating tomorrow’s workforce is played by parents, teachers, mentors, and community leaders at the state and local level. At a time when young people are leaving our state, we must work collaboratively in our communities to give students the tools necessary to compete in high demand fields in Ohio.
Sir: I respectfully disagree with your view of the purposes of public education. You have also conflated voting for DeVos and your apparent loyalty to John Kasich’s “Ohio First” educational policies (except his policies on school financing).
You restate Kasich’s parochial view that the major purpose of public education in Ohio is job preparation for “high demand fields in Ohio.” Of course, many students who are educated in Ohio will not spend the rest of their lives in Ohio. Do you regard these “leavers” as free-loaders? Will you blame educators if graduates of Ohio schools leave Ohio?
Should public education be tethered to workforce preparation for Ohio? I do not think so, especially since the economy is increasingly globalized and corporations show no loyalty to Ohio without some tax breaks. Those tax breaks do not help the budgets of public schools.
Among the many people whom you cite as having an important role in educating “tomorrow’s workforce” you omit yourself and other elected officials. You give lip-service to Ohio’s “social well being” as a purpose of education, but clearly want public education in Ohio to be tethered to workforce preparation for Ohio.
You say not a word about the most important mission of public education in the United States: preparing each generation to participate in a democratic society, especially being an informed voter.
Thank you for the form letter explaining your reason for supporting Devos as Secretary of Education and your views about the purposes of education.
I will be working to defeat you in the next election cycle.
Sincerely,
Laura H. Chapman
Report from the Washington Post:
Republican elected officials need security at town hall meetings in their district as voters express outrage over ACA and DeVos
Vote them out! We need a Congress willing to stand up to Bannon and Trump!
Keep it up!
Jeff Bryant pulls together persuasive evidence that Betsy DeVos energized a movement that was previously scattered and disconnected. People who had no idea that the privatization of public schools is a genuine threat became informed. Groups began forming at the grassroots level to defend their community’s public schools. Supposedly “progressive” Democrats supported privatization by charters because they were hoodwinked by fake reformers promising fake miracles. For those of us fighting privatization, DeVos clarified what is at stake: the survival of democratically-controlled, community-based public schools, responsible for all children.
Even Senators like Michael Bennett and Corey Booker voted against DeVos, even though they fundamentally agree with her view of school reform by school choice.
Make no mistake: School choice was born in racism and it promotes racism.
Jeff Bryant writes:
“Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasn’t the only thing that went down to defeat that day.
“For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a “Washington Consensus” that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.
“Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven “reform” mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were “happily copying each other” on education.
“Democrats have in recent years sounded – and acted – a lot like Republicans in advancing corporate education reform, which seeks to operate public schools as if they were businesses, not civic institutions,” writes Valerie Strauss, the veteran education journalist who blogs for the Washington Post. “By embracing many of the tenets of corporate reform — including the notion of ‘school choice’ and the targeting of teachers and their unions as being blind to the needs of children – they helped make DeVos’s education views, once seen as extreme, seem less so.”
“But with the election of President Donald Trump and the ascension of DeVos to secretary, that consensus appears dead.
“She would start her job with no credibility,” Education Week quotes Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington. “A vote for Betsy DeVos is a vote for a secretary of education who is likely to succeed only in further dividing us on education issues.”
“The DeVos vote reflected the tribal, dysfunctional, polarized nature of our politics,” writes Woodrow Wilson Center senior scholar Linda Killian in USA Today. “It is a harbinger of things to come.”
“But what looks like the death of a political consensus on education could be the beginning of something else: an opportunity for progressives to press a new education agenda. Here’s what should they do.”
He proceeds to write about next steps. Read them.
Here is one you can take right now. Join the Network for Public Education. DeVos caused a huge spike in our membership. She has made parents and educators and graduates of public schools aware that they must stand together and fight the DeVos-Trump agenda of charters, vouchers, cybercharters, for-profit schools, homeschooling. Just remember when she speaks soothing words about public schools, she wants to take funding away from them to share with all those private choices.
When Eli Broad talks about charters, he is endorsing the DeVos agenda. When Democrats for Education Reform, Families for Excellent Schools, Stand for Children, Bill Gates, and other billionaires sing the praises of charter schools, they are singing from the DeVos privatization hymnal.
When Anthony Cody and I started the Network
Protestors blocked Betsy DeVos from entering a public middle school in DC.
Protesters block Betsy DeVos from entering public school in Washington
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/devos-protest-at-washington-school/index.html
I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand, I was thinking of planning a “Betsy, bar the door” campaign, because of her well-documented contempt for public schools.
But I had breakfast on Tuesday with Cindy Marten, the dynamic superintendent of the San Diego public schools, and she told me about the wonderful accomplishments and spirit of teachers, principals, and students serving a very diverse enrollment. I told her she should invite DeVos to see the schools, see how they address the needs of English language learners and kids with disabilities.
Which is best?
How could she not be impressed by public schools that enroll all children? How could she not see that the district’ charter schools are draining resources, not improving the public schools?
Doors open to all. Even DeVos.
Barbara Miner is a veteran journalist based in Milwaukee, where she writes often about the stat’s disastrous voucher plan. In 2013, she published a book called “Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City.”
In this article in the Los Angeles Times, Miner warns that the public must keep watch on DeVos because her goal is to legitimize vouchers for religious schools across the nation.
She warns:
“DeVos, now confirmed as secretary of Education, is not just another inexperienced member of the president’s Cabinet. She is an ideologue with a singular educational passion — replacing our system of democratically controlled public schools with a universal voucher program that privileges private and religious ones.
“If you care about our public schools and our democracy, you should be worried.”
Miner describes how Milwaukee and Wisconsin were taken in by bait and switch.
“Milwaukee’s program began in 1990, when the state Legislature passed a bill allowing 300 students in seven nonsectarian private schools to receive taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers. It was billed as a small, low-cost experiment to help poor black children, and had a five-year sunset clause.
“That was the bait. The first “switch” came a few weeks later, when the Republican governor eliminated the sunset clause. Ever since, vouchers have been a divisive yet permanent fixture in Wisconsin.
“Conservatives have consistently expanded the program, especially when Republicans controlled the state government. (Vouchers have never been put to a public vote in Wisconsin.) Today, some 33,000 students in 212 schools receive publicly funded vouchers, not just in Milwaukee but throughout Wisconsin. If it were its own school district, the voucher program would be the state’s second largest. The overwhelming majority of the schools are religious.
“Voucher schools are private schools that have applied for a state-funded program that pays tuition for some or all of its student body. Even if every single student at a school receives a publicly funded voucher, as is the case in 22 of Milwaukee’s schools, that school is still defined as private.
“Because they are defined as “private,” voucher schools operate by separate rules, with minimal public oversight or transparency. They can sidestep basic constitutional protections such as freedom of speech. They do not have to provide the same level of second-language or special-education services. They can suspend or expel students without legal due process. They can ignore the state’s requirements for open meetings and records. They can disregard state law prohibiting discrimination against students on grounds of sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or marital or parental status.”
Since 1990, the people of Wisconsin have paid more than $2 billion for vouchers, mostly to religious institutions. This has been an expensive experiment.
“Privatizing an essential public function and forcing the public to pay for it, even while removing it from meaningful public oversight, weakens our democracy.”
The Onion is usually first with the news. Judge for yourself whether it’s real or fake.
At her first meeting with Department of Education staff, she rolled out her ambitious plans.
http://www.theonion.com/infographic/how-devos-plans-change-department-education-55259
Here are the first major initiatives. Open the link to read the rest of the plan.
“Modify Title IX to allow invisible hand of the market to sort out any student rape cases that may arise
“Identify at-risk students and do nothing whatsoever
“Ensure that all students, regardless of background, receive the opportunity to bask in the shining light of Christ
“Let low-income parents choose which one of their children gets to go to school.”
The United Teachers of Los Angeles sent this letter to billionaire Eli Broad. Broad has been a major funder of privately managed charter schools in Los Angeles, Detroit, and other districts around the nation. He currently is promoting a $450 million plan to put half of all students in Los Angeles in charter schools. He also donates large sums to candidates who advocate the replacement of public schools with charter schools.
A few days before the vote to confirm Betsy DeVos, Broad announced that he opposed her.
UTLA wrote to Eli Broad:
Dear Mr. Broad:
UTLA and public education advocates, parents, students and community members have been fighting against Betsy DeVos’ nomination as Secretary of Education months before your letter, dated Feb. 1, was sent to all US Senators, in which you asked them to vote against her confirmation, which just took place today.
You were late to that struggle. We are not surprised.
If you are, according to your letter, “a believer in high-quality public schools and strong accountability for ALL public schools, including traditional and charter,” then you can do something right now: Immediately withdraw your financial support for the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).
CCSA is a lobbying arm of the charter school industry that has amassed more than $170 million to fight the very existence of our neighborhood public schools.
Instead of continuing to fund CCSA, you should take responsibility for the damage you have caused, through your funding, to the school systems in California, Detroit, and New Orleans. In the latter two places, you worked hand-in-hand with Betsy DeVos.
To repair the damage, send your generous donations with no strings attached to the democratically elected school boards in California, especially the Los Angeles School Board, as well as schools in New Orleans and Detroit. School boards and school communities will invest this money appropriately.
In your letter, you say you “have never met Mrs. DeVos” and you have “serious concerns about her support of unregulated charter schools and vouchers as well as the potential conflicts of interests she might bring to the job.”
Forgive us as we take a moment to put this statement in context.
Last year, as one of the largest donors to CCSA, you helped thwart common-sense legislation like SB 322, which would have protected charter school students from unfair expulsions. You, through donations to CCSA, also intensely lobbied against AB 709, an accountability and transparency bill, which would have required that charter schools comply with the same state laws governing open meetings, open records and conflict of interest that traditional public schools do.
You and DeVos teamed up to fund legislative races in Louisiana, a state that, post-Hurricane Katrina, became the poster child for unregulated charter growth and the systematic destruction of the civic institution of public education.
Since 2008, you gave $212,500 to DeVos’ lobbying organization founded and chaired by her called “Alliance for School Choice.” It is a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm that, similar to CCSA, undermines public education and pushes for expansion of unregulated charter schools and school vouchers.
You and DeVos both funded the Educational Achievement Authority in Michigan, which oversaw the mass charter-ization and de-unionization of Detroit public schools, resulting in a wasteland rife with student equity and access violations, recently documented in a front page story in the New York Times.
While you claim to have never met her before, you have worked with her on multiple fronts, in multiple cities.
In 2016, with a donation of $2 million to CCSA Advocates, you were the most generous among California’s
elite handful of billionaires, including the Walton family of Walmart, Reed Hastings of Netflix and Doris Fisher of Gap, Inc. Your friend and former Los Angeles mayor Richard J. Riordan donated $50,000 to CCSA. He has also given
$1 million in the school board district race against School Board President Steve Zimmer.
You have so much money, maybe there is confusion around what legislation and which candidates your
vast wealth is actually fighting or supporting.
Because of your torrential financial support, last year CCSA far surpassed all other funders in state political races, including groups backed by the energy industry and real estate developers.
You and members of your billionaire club gave more than $27 million to various PACs like the Parent Teacher Alliance (PTA), the title of which is sneaky and confusing to parents. PTA has amassed $8 million this year alone. EdVoice amassed another $9 million. You gave more than $1.5 million to both of these PACs.
These independent expenditures help fund groups like Speak UP, Parent Revolution and Great Public Schools Now, as well as countless CCSA-backed candidates, who then work to undermine public education on your behalf.
When DeVos was first nominated, on Nov. 23, CCSA released a statement with high praise for Trump’s pick, and even said “Mrs. DeVos has long demonstrated a commitment to providing families with improved public school options and we look forward to working with the administration on proposals allowing all students in California to access their right to a high quality public education.”
CCSA and Great Public Schools Now have since backed off their enthusiastic support for DeVos,sensing it would be unpopular. We hope you have a deeper reason behind sending out your letter to the Senate, and that it will signal a shift in your financial support.
In your letter, you say DeVos is “unprepared and unqualified for the position.” You further say that we must have someone “who believes in public education and the need to keep public schools public.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Our public schools are in great need, many of them suffering from the years of unrelenting attacks from people like you.
Make amends. Join parents, students, educators and community members in our fight to save public education.
Immediately suspend your financial support of CCSA. Give your generous donations with no strings attached to public schools in California, Detroit, and New Orleans, and leave the educational decisions to our elected school boards and local stakeholders, who — unlike billionaires — are truly accountable to our communities.
Sincerely,
UTLA President
Alex Caputo-Pearl
Cc:
United States
Senators
—
Anna Bakalis
UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net
http://www.UTLA.net
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