The writer of this story Colin Woodard won the George Polk Award for exposing the for-profit scheme that Governor Paul LePage tried to impose on the children of Maine. Jeb Bush pulled the strings.
Archives for category: Bush, Jeb
Peter Greene writes here about the decision by the New York Council of Dchool Diperintendents to invite David Coleman to address its annual conference.
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/01/ny-super-slap-in-face.html
Coleman, as you know, was the architect of the Common Core and is now CEO of the College Board, which administers the SAT. The SAT has been aligned with the Common Core.
Nothing in education has been as controversial as the CC. it has come under fire from left and right. During the recent presidential election, candidate Trump called it a disaster and promised to get rid of it. Betsy DeVos, a close associate of Jeb Bush, who championed the Common Core, never mentions it. Bush candidly admitted that he loved the CC because it would show how terrible the nation’s public schools are and precipitate a parent stampede to charters and vouchers.
Arne Duncan so loved the CC that he spent $360 million creating two testing consortia—PARCC and Dmarter Balanced Asessment—that enlisted almost every state but have rapidly lost state members and are now on like support.
Will David Coleman explain how the Common Core became toxic?
Patricia Levesque has worked for Jeb Bush for many years. She is his henchperson in promoting Florida as a miraculous story of educational improvement, based on Bush’s beliefs in high-stakes testing, test-based accountability, school report cards, and choice via charters, cybercharters, for-profit charters, and vouchers. The one belief he does not have is that public schools are important and valuable community institutions.
Here she is today, touting Florida as a “national model.” She says that Florida’s accountability system has “paid off” and is a roaring success.
The Bush approach may be briefly summarized as test-test-test, then close or privatize the schools that can’t produce the scores.
Let’s go to the videotape, or in this case, the NAEP scores for 2015.
In 2015, Florida scored at about the national average in 4th grade math but below the national average in 8th grade math.
Nineteen states had higher NAEP scores in 4th grade math than Florida.
Florida students in 8th grade math scored below the national average and were tied with their peers in South Carolina and Nevada.
Forty states had higher scores in 8th grade math than Florida in 2015.
In 4th grade reading in 2015, Florida was just above the national average.
Fifteen states recorded higher scores than Florida in 4th grade reading.
In 8th grade reading in 2015, Florida students were at the national average, tied with North Carolina and Georgia.
Thirty five states had higher reading scores on the NAEP in 2015 than students in Florida.
Why would anyone consider Florida to be a national model?
Why not choose a state like Massachusetts, which is #1 on all of these measures?
Who would choose to follow the practices of a state that scored at about the national average, rather than one of those states that consistently has greater success on the NAEP than Florida?
What Levesque fails to mention is that many states produced higher test scores over the past 20 years, and Florida’s relative position remained about the same. Florida has a policy of holding back third-graders based on test scores, so that probably inflates their 4th grade reading and math scores. The gains of Florida and other states may reflect that unrelenting emphasis on testing, pre-testing, interim testing, etc., which, as Daniel Koretz points out in his recent book “The Testing Charade” produces inflated scores.
If you live in Florida, check the facts before you follow the lead of Jeb Bush, who is trying to protect his “legacy” of high-stakes testing and privatization.
Bottom line: Florida is no national model, unless your goal is mediocrity.
Mercedes Schneider’s reviews Betsy DeVos’s speech to her friend Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence.
Betsy and Jeb have this in common: They both hate public schools and have devoted their life to demeaning, belittling, and attacking the schools that 85-90% of American children attend. They are in love with consumer choice, and they would like nothing better than to direct public funds to religious schools, for-profit schools, cyber schools, and homeschooling.
As Mercedes notes, Betsy (or more likely, a speechwriter) discovered “A Nation at Risk,” The 1983 jeremiad that blamed public schools for the loss of industries to Germany and Japan. The report was written in the midst of the 1982 recession, and the commissioners decided that the schools were to blame for the downturn. When the economy recovered, no one bothered to thank the schools.
Betsy devoutly believes that choice will fix everything, but “A Nation at Risk” didn’t mention choice.
And she continues to ignore the evidence of the past 25 years of choice. Her home state of Michigan is overrun with charter schools, and its standing on NAEP fell from the middle of the 50 States to the bottom 10 from 2003 to 2013. The news out of the New Orleans all-Charter District throws cold water on the Charter Movement, as New Orleans continues to be a low-performing District in a low-performing State. The evidence on vouchers continues to accumulate, and it is not promising. In the most recent voucher studies, students actually lose ground. After three or four years, those who have not left to return to public schools catch up with their peers who stayed in public schools, but that’s probably because the weakest students left.
Now that Betsy is talking numbers, maybe she will pay attention to the research on charters and vouchers and admit that her favorite panacea is not working.
But I’m not holding my breath.
Jeb Bush is a seminal person in the privatization movement. He developed high-stakes testing and accountability, A-F school grades, so as to produce a steady supply of failing schools every year, ripe for privatization. He and his friends in the Florida legislature are alert to every opportunity to demean the teaching profession and to shovel public money to private interests.
Today begins the annual conference of His Foundation for Educational Excellence [for none]. Betsy DeVos was a member of the board but stepped down when she became Secretary of Education.
Review the agenda, and you will see who is on the train (it includes Clay Christensen, advocate of disruption, and Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, independent evaluator of vouchers in Milwaukee and D.C.).
In 2002,the people of Florida adopted an amendment to the state Constitution that mandated the reduction of class sizes.
Beginning in the 2010-11 school year, classes from prekindergarten to grade 3 were capped at 18; grades 4-8 were capped at 22; grades 9-12 were limited to 25.
Ever since, the state’s politicians—led by Jeb Bush—have sought to eliminate or roll back that expensive mandate.
Jeb Bush is trying a new tactic now. He has devised a devious plan, which offers to raise teschers’ Rock bottom Salaries in exchange for killing the class size limits.
Scott Maxwell of the zorlando Sentinel quickly spotted the sneaky trade off.
“So, news that the leader of Jeb Bush’s education foundation has drafted a constitutional amendment to boost pay sounds great … until you read the fine print.
“That’s when you see the proposal only provides money for teacher raises if Floridians first vote to lift the cap on class sizes and agree to stuff more children in Florida classrooms.
“And even then, there’s no guarantee of how much in raises teachers would get.
“In other words, if you want to maybe treat your teachers like something better than dirt, you have to first agree to go back to the days where you treated your kids like dirt.
“Happy voting, everyone!
“In some regards, the proposal by Patricia Levesque — the head of Bush’s Excellence in Education foundation and a member of the state’s Constitution Revision Commission — is no surprise.
“Bush hated the idea of forcing the state to spend more on smaller classes.
“Back when he was governor, he opposed the 2002 amendment and announced that, if voters passed it, he had “devious plans” to undermine it.
“Actually, Bush didn’t announce his devious plans. He was caught divulging them to allies by a reporter with a tape recorder whom Bush hadn’t spotted in the room.
“So now, 15 years later, we have Devious Plans 2.0.
“Levesque says there’s nothing devious about her plans. She simply wants to give school districts more “flexibility” in meeting the class-size requirements, by allowing them to use averages.
“Your kid’s math class could have 36 students as long as another math class has 13.
“She says the teacher-pay part of her proposal is simply about making sure the money stays in the schools, the way voters want.
“Frankly, I don’t buy that.
“I think the teacher-raise proposal is just a gimmick — that Levesque knows there’s no way 60 percent of Floridians would vote for bigger class sizes. So she tucked a sweetener in there … a way to let backers run a campaign on a popular topic (raising teacher pay) instead of the real goal (cramming more kids in each classroom).
“If raising teacher pay were truly the goal, we’d see an amendment that proposed just that. But that’s not what this is.
“Theoretically, Levesque is right when she says implementing the class-size amendment requires flexibility.
“But we have been duped before on that front.
“In fact, legislators have flexed the intent right out of the law.
“The 2002 amendment, after all, was clear. It capped class sizes at 25 students for high school, 22 students in fourth through eighth grades and 18 in pre-K through third.
“Still, Florida schools are full of classrooms that have 28, 32 and 35 kids.
“How? Lawmakers created loopholes the size of Iowa (which, by the way, also pays its teachers more than Florida).
“Lawmakers exempted electives and extracurricular classes from the caps — which sounded OK at first. I mean, 30 students in a PE class or 40 in chorus sounds reasonable.
“But then lawmakers began reclassifying every class you can imagine as electives.
“American literature became an “extracurricular.”
“So did French. And Spanish. And marine biology.”
Just start with the assumption that a Jeb Bush and his so-called Foundation for Educational Excellence Don’t care a whit about students or teachers or education, and you will get the picture.
A couple of days ago, Bill Gates said he has a new plan to reform education. As I pointed out in a post, Bill Gates is batting 0 for 3. He dropped $2 Billion into breaking up large high schools and turning them into small schools. He started in 2000, didn’t see a big jump in test scores, and backed out in 2008. Then, having decided that the answer to high test scores was to punish teachers whose student scores didn’t go up, he pushed value-added Assessment, partnering with Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. Thousands of educators were fired and many schools were closed based on Gates’s fancy. That lasted from 2008 until now, and it has been written into state law in many states, although it has distorted the purpose of education and created massive demoralization among teachers and a national teacher shortage. Then he funded the Common Core, in its entirety. It is his pedagogical Frankenstein, his personal belief that education should be completely standardized, from standards to curriculum to teacher education to teacher evaluation. Speaking to the National Board for Certified Teachers a few years ago, he praised standardization and talked about the beauty of standard electrical plugs. No matter where you live, you can plug in an appliance and it works! Clearly, that was his metaphor for education. What did he spend on the creation and promotion of the Common Core? No one knows for sure, but estimates range from $200 Million to $2 Billion.
There is one other massive Gates failure that I forgot to mention: inBloom. This was a $100million investment in data mining of students’ personally identifiable data. Several states and districts agreed to turn their data over to inBloom, which wipould use the data as its owners chose. Parents got wind of this and launched a campaign to stop in loom. Led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Stickland of Colorado, parents besieged their legislators, and one by one, the state’s and districts pulled out. InBloom collapsed.
We don’t know how much money Gates has poured into charter schools, but we imagine he must be disappointed that on average they don’t produce higher scores than the public schools he disdains. He bundled millions for a referendum in Washington State to allow charter schools, the fourth such referendum. Despite Gates’ swamping the election with money, the motion barely passed. Then the State’s highest court denied public funding to charter schools, declaring that they are not public schools because they are not governed by elected school boards. Gates and his friends tried to oust the Chief Judge when she ran for re-election, but she coasted to victory.
As you see, he is actually 0 for 5 in his determination to “reform” the nation’s public schools.
But he is not deterred by failure!
So what is the latest Gates’ idea?
Laura Chapman explains here:
“At the Meeting of the Council for Great City Schools October 19, 2017, Gates said:
“Today, I’d like to share what we have learned over the last 17 years and how those insights will change what we focus on over the next five years.”
“I think that Gates has learned very little about education in the last 17 years. He is still fixated on “the lagging performance” of our students on what he regards as “the key metrics of a quality education – math scores, English scores, international comparisons, and college completion.
“Gates wants his narrow definition of “quality education” to be accepted as if the proper doctrine for improving schools and also ensuring the “economic future and competitiveness of the United States.”
“Gates wants faster progress in raising test scores, and high school graduation rates. He seems to think that “constraints and other demands on state and local budget” actually justify his plans to “ increase high school graduation and college-readiness rates.”
“Gates takes credit for funding for the deeply flawed + Measures of Effective Teaching project (MET), claiming that it showed educators ”how to gather feedback from students on their engagement and classroom learning experiences . . . and about observing teachers at their craft, assessing their performance fairly, and providing actionable feedback.” The $64 million project in 2007 tried to make it legitimate for teachers to be judged by “multiple measures” including the discredited VAM, and dubious Danielson teacher observation protocol http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/01/review-MET-final-2013 Gates learned nothing from that micromanaging effort.
“Gates funded and promoted the Common Core. He says: “Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.”He remains committed to the ideas that “teacher evaluations and ratings” are useful ways “to improve instruction,” He thinks “data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions,” will improve student achievement. This jargon is meaningless.
“Gates said: Overall, we expect to invest close to $1.7 billion in US public education over the next five years.“…“We anticipate that about 60 percent of this will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions . . . and use data to drive continuous improvement.
“Don’t be deceived by the “public education” comment. Gates wants to control public schools by dismantling their governance by and for the public. By “networks of schools” Gates means “innovation districts” where persons employed by private interests can control educational policy under the banner of “collaboration” or “partnership.”
“Gates offers several examples of networks. One is CORE, a so-called “partnership” of eight large urban school districts in California: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana,
“CORE stands for “California Office for Reform in Education CORE a non-governmental organization, based in San Francisco, funded by the Stuart Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation (Stephen Bechtel Fund); and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are some other things you should know about CORE.
“CORE was created in order to bypass the California State Board of Education and Race to the Top accountability, by marketing its new “School Quality Improvement Index.” This index includes social-emotional learning and school climate indicators in addition to California requirements—test scores, graduation rates, and the like.
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies with cross-district sharing data—including results from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.
“The final rating for each school in a CORE district is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating for school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.
“An autonomous “School Quality Oversight Panel” nullifies oversight of these districts by the State Board of Education. This “oversight” panel has CORE supporters recruited from The Association of California School Administrators, and California School Boards Association, California State PTA. The main monitors/promoters of this scheme are actually two panel members: Ed Trust West and the Policy Analysis for California Education. Bot of these organizations are sustained in large measure by private funding.
“Ed Trust West is funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, State Farm Companies, and these foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, Kresge, Lumina, Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family. The Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is based at Stanford University, with participation by the University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. PACE is a conduit for grants from USDE and from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; and The Walter S. Johnson Foundation.
“School ratings developed by the CORE Districts flow directly to GreatSchools.org —a marketing site for schools and education products. GreatSchools.org is funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations. Add the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund. and 15 other foundations.“GreatSchools.org in a non-profit in name only. GreatSchools.org sells data from all states and districts. For a fee, it will push users of the website to particular schools. Buyers of the data include Zillow and Scholastic.
“I think that the CORE District model illustrates how the private takeover of education is happening. Policy formation and favored school practices are being determined by the wealth and the peculiar visions non governmental groups with deep pockets. In the CORE Districts, this work is aided and abetted by superintendents who are eager for the money and the illusion of prestige that comes from permitting private funders to determine educational policies and practices.
“Gates’ speech to members of the Council of the Great City Schools also includes the example of Tennessee’s LIFT Education as a “network” that is worth replicating.
“LIFT Education enlists educators from 12 rural and urban districts across the state to promote the Common Core agenda and Teach for America practices. Participants in LIFT Education are convened by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education —SCORE. The SCORE website says participants in LIFT have spent the last year and a half collaborating on high-quality early literacy instruction, focusing on building knowledge and vocabulary by piloting knowledge-rich read-alouds in early grades.
“The LIFT/SCORE alliance provides a governance structure for insisting that teachers follow the Gates-funded Common Core. Teachers are given an instructional practice guide that is also a teacher evaluation rubric from Student Achievement Partner, authors of the Common Core. https://lifteducationtn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LIFT-Instructional-Practice-Guide-K-5-Literacy.pdf
“This LIFT/SCORE non-governmental network is the result of private wealth channeled to superintendents who have outsourced the “coaching” and compliance monitoring for the Common Core literacy project to the Brooklyn-based The New Teachers Project (TNTP). In effect, TFA coaching and systems of data-gathering are present in all of the LIFT/SCORE districts.
“SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education has been funded since 2010 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so far $10,623,497 including multiple years for operating support. Add a 2012 grant to SCORE as sponsor of a Chiefs for Change Policy Forum for district leaders so they would be “ambassadors for education reform.” The bait for the LIFT/SCORE network thus came from Chiefs for Change–Jeb Bush’s baby, unfriendly to public education.
“Gates says: “Over the next several years, we will support about 30 of these networks (e.g.., CORE, LIFT) and will start initially with high needs schools and districts in 6 to 8 states. Each network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching, and data collection and analysis.””
“Our goal is to work with the field to ensure that five years from now, teachers at every grade level in secondary schools have access to high-quality, aligned curriculum choices in English and math, as well as science curricula based on the Next Generation Science Standards.”
“What else is in the works from the many who would be king of American education?
“We expect that about 25 percent of our funding in the next five years will focus on big bets – innovations with the potential to change the trajectory of public education over the next 10 to 15 years.” What does Gates means by “big bets?” He expects to command the expertise and R&D to change the “trajectory” of education. He will fund translations of “developments in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics” in addition to “technology-enabled” approaches in education.
“There is money left for more.
“We anticipate that the final 15 percent of our funding in the next five years will go to the charter sector. We will continue to help high-performing charters expand to serve more students. But our emphasis will be on efforts that improve outcomes for special needs students — especially kids with mild-to-moderate learning and behavioral disabilities.”
“This proposal sounds like Gates wants to cherry pick the students with “mild to moderate learning and behavioral disabilities,” send them to Gates-funded charter schools to bring their scores up, then claim success where everyone else has failed. This same strategy is being used in “pay-for performance” preschools. Gates sounds like he expects to have a free-hand in ignoring the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Evidently he wants the “flexibility” to ignore IDEA that he believes to be present in charter schools.
“Bill Gates is still fixated on the idea that his money and clout can and will attract other foundations and private investors. He still holds on to the mistaken idea that “what works” in one community or state can be “scaled up,” and REPLICATED, elsewhere. He is ignorant of the history of education and efforts to replicate programs. He is trapped in an industrial one-size-fits-all model of education.
“Gates ends with this: “Our role is to serve as a catalyst of good ideas, driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students – but especially low-income students and students of color – must have equal access to a great public education that prepares them for adulthood. We will not stop until this has been achieved, and we look forward to continued partnership with you in this work in the years to come.”
“Beware of billionaires who want to partner with you.
“Gates still seems to think that students, especially low income students, can and will be successful if they have “ equal access to a great public education.” He remains ignorant of the abundant research that shows schools alone are not responsible for, or solutions to, institutionalized segregation and poverty–the main causes of serious disadvantage among low-income students and students of color.
“Gates has grandiose plans. All are focused on privatizing education and selling that snake oil as if it is authentic support for public education.“
This is a story about vouchers in Florida, where the state constitution forbids the use of public funds “directly or indirectly” for religious schools. Message to school-children: Ignore the state Constitution. It is meaningless.
The Florida state Constitution forbids the use of public funds in religious schools.
Article 1, Section 3 of the state Constitution says:
“Religious Freedom
“There shall be no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting or penalizing the free exercise thereof. Religious freedom shall not justify practices inconsistent with public morals, peace or safety. No revenue of the state or any political subdivision or agency thereof shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”
Jeb Bush wanted to amend that language so Florida could provide vouchers for religious schools. So, he got an amendment on the ballot in 2012 called the Religious Freedom Amendment, or Amendment 8. What clever wording! How many people would vote against “religious freedom”?
Enough to defeat Amendment 8. Fifty-five point five percent (55.5%) of voters said NO to vouchers.
But that didn’t stop Jeb and his friends from cooking up ways to bypass the State Constitution and the clear will of the people.
They proceeded to develop voucher programs masquerading as something else: tax credits, scholarships, whatever.
The Orlando Sentinel just concluded an investigation of Florida’s voucher programs and concluded it is an unregulated sector that enrolls 140,000 students and costs taxpayers $1 Billion per year. All in a state whose Constitution prohibits vouchers and whose voters opposed changing the Constitution.
The series begins like this:
“Private schools in Florida will collect nearly $1 billion in state-backed scholarships this year through a system so weakly regulated that some schools hire teachers without college degrees, hold classes in aging strip malls and falsify fire-safety and health records.
“The limited oversight of Florida’s scholarship programs allowed a principal under investigation for molesting a student at his Brevard County school to open another school under a new name and still receive the money, an Orlando Sentinel investigation found.
“Another Central Florida school received millions of dollars in scholarships, sometimes called school vouchers, for nearly a decade even though it repeatedly violated program rules, including hiring staff with criminal convictions.
“Despite the problems, the number of children using Florida’s scholarship programs has more than tripled in the past decade to 140,000 students this year at nearly 2,000 private schools. If students using Florida Tax Credit, McKay and Gardiner scholarships made up their own school district, they would be Florida’s sixth-largest in student population, just ahead of the Jacksonville area.
“The scholarships are good. The problem is the school,” said Edda Melendez, an Osceola County mother. “They need to start regulating the private schools.”
“Melendez complained to the state last year about a private school in Kissimmee. The school promised specialized help for her 5-year-old twin sons, who have autism, but one of their teachers was 21 years old and didn’t have a bachelor’s degree or experience with autistic children.
“I feel bad for all the parents who didn’t know what’s going on there,” she told the state.
“Last year, nearly a quarter of all state scholarship students — 30,000 — attended 390 private schools in Central Florida. The schools received $175.6 million worth of the scholarships, which are for children from low-income families and those with disabilities.
“During its investigation, the Sentinel visited more than 30 private schools in Orange, Seminole, Lake, Osceola and Brevard counties, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and interviewed dozens of parents, private school operators, state officials and policy experts.
“Unlike public schools, private schools, including those that accept the state scholarships, operate free from most state rules. Private school teachers and principals, for example, are not required to have state certification or even college degrees.
“One Orlando school, which received $500,000 from the public programs last year, has a 24-year-old principal still studying at a community college.
“Nor do private schools need to follow the state’s academic standards. One curriculum, called Accelerated Christian Education or ACE, is popular in some private schools and requires students to sit at partitioned desks and fill out worksheets on their own for most of the day, with little instruction from teachers or interaction with classmates.
“And nearly anything goes in terms of where private school classes meet. The Sentinel found scholarship students in the same office building as Whozz Next Bail Bonds on South Orange Blossom Trail, in a Colonial Drive day-care center that reeked of dirty diapers and in a school near Winter Park that was facing eviction and had wires dangling from a gap in the office ceiling and a library with no books, computers or furniture.
“However, scholarships can be appealing because some private schools offer rigorous academics on modern campuses, unique programs or small classes that allow students more one-on-one attention, among other benefits. Bad experiences at public schools also fuel interest in scholarships.
“Parents opting out of public schools often cite worries about large campuses, bullying, what they call inadequate services for special-needs children and state-required testing. Escaping high-stakes testing is such a scholarship selling point that one private school administrator refers to students as “testing refugees.”
“But the Sentinel found problems with Florida’s programs, which make up the largest school voucher and scholarship initiative in the nation:
► At least 19 schools submitted documents since 2012 that misled state officials about fire or health inspections, including some with forged inspectors’ names or altered dates. Eight of the schools still received scholarship money with the state’s blessing.
► Upset parents sometimes complain to the state, assuming it has some say over academic quality at these private schools. It does not. “They can conduct their schools in the manner they believe to be appropriate,” reads a typical response from the Florida Department of Education to a parent.
► The education department has stopped some schools from taking scholarships when they violated state rules, from the one in Fort Lauderdale led by a man convicted of stealing $20,000 to a school in Gainesville caught depositing scholarship checks for students no longer enrolled. But the department often gives schools second chances and sometimes doesn’t take action even when alerted to a problem.
► Florida’s approach is so hands-off that a state directory lists private schools that can accommodate students with special needs — such as autism — without evidence the schools’ staff is trained to handle disabilities.”
Since Betsy DeVos considers Florida to be a national model, you should read this series and learn what’s heading your way and stop it before it gets into your state.
It is not unusual to say that Trump lied about something. It happens every day.
But he does try to keep his campaign promises. He has tried and failed to build the Wall, and Mexico won’t pay for it. He has tried and failed to get rid of Obamacare.
But he hasn’t even tried to get rid of Common Core, which he promised to do. Everyone he interviewed for Education Secretary–including Eva Moskowitz and Michelle Rhee–supports Common Core.
Betsy DeVos was a supporter of Common Core before she became Secretary of Education, like her mentor Jeb Bush. She recently nominated at least three strong supporters of Common Core–former Michigan Governor John Engler, former North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue, and test expert Greg Cizek, who helped develop one of the Common Core tests (Smarter Balanced Assessment)–to the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
DeVos has not made any effort to discourage use of the Common Core.
Opponents of the CCSS: you were hoaxed! Trump will not get rid of it, nor will Betsy DeVos.
Kari Lydersen explains the story behind the Illinois tax-credit program, in this article.
In exchange for sending more money to Chicago, the Illinois legislature (controlled by Democrats) included a $75 million provision for tax credits for private school scholarships.
This is a voucher by another name.
It is the way to enact vouchers in a state where the state constitution bars them.
The nation’s best known tax credit program is in Florida, where Jeb Bush tried and failed to convince voters or the state supreme court to roll back the state constitutional ban on vouchers.
Betsy DeVos wants a national tax credit program, to drain students and resources from public schools.
Learn about it.
It is another way to privatize public education without public consent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 