Archives for category: Inequity
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The Worst Tax Bill in American History: Written for Kleptocrats

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2017 //
12

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman Orenstein of the American Enterprise Institute wrote about the tax bills passed by the Republican Party in the House and Senate, soon to be reconciled and signed into law.

“In the past three days, Republican leaders in the Senate scrambled to corral votes for a tax bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would add $1 trillion to the deficit — without holding any meaningful committee hearings. Worse, Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation: to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors, and down the road, to use the leverage of huge deficits to cut and privatize Medicare and Social Security.

“Congress no longer works the way it’s supposed to…

“Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it.

“This is a far cry from the aspirations of Republican presidential giants like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as legions of former Republican senators and representatives who identified critical roles for government and worked tirelessly to make them succeed. It’s an agenda bereft of any serious efforts to remedy the problems that trouble vast segments of the American public, including the disaffected voters who flocked to Mr. Trump.

“The failure of Republican members of Congress to resist the anti-democratic behavior of President Trump — including holding not a single hearing on his and his team’s kleptocracy — is cringe-worthy. A few Republican senators have spoken up, but occasional words have not been matched by any meaningful deeds. Only conservative intellectuals have acknowledged the bankruptcy of the Republican Party.

“We have never suggested that Democrats are angels and Republicans devils. Parties exist to win elections and organize government, and they are shaped by the interests, ideas and donors that constitute their coalitions. Neither party is immune from a pull to the extreme.

“But the imbalance today is striking, and frightening. Our democracy requires vigorous competition between two serious and ideologically distinct parties, both of which operate in the realm of truth, see governing as an essential and ennobling responsibility, and believe that the acceptance of republican institutions and democratic values define what it is to be an American. The Republican Party must reclaim its purpose.”

Categories Ethics, Inequity

Arthur Camins: “Americans: At Long Last, Have You Left No Sense of Decency?”

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2017 //
19

Arthur Camins refers to the famous line of attorney Joseph Welch, challenging Senator Joseph McCarthy.

“Don’t let Republicans take away your self-respect and humanity– your claim to be a decent person. Tell them enough. Stop. Tell the Democrats to stand up and fight back for all of us or get out of the way for politicians who will.

“Self-respect, humanity and decency are what is at stake in the Republican give-to-the-rich tax plan, their effort to undo environmental and financial regulations, their unrelenting push for charter schools and vouchers instead of public schools, their efforts to undermine voting and labor rights, their endless attempts to undo the advances of the Affordable Care Act, cut back on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and support for the disabled, their drive to control access to information on the Internet, and their opposition all reasonable controls on guns.

“Republican ascendancy in federal, state, and local government marks the triumph of an immoral moral principle: Their gain comes at my expense. Historically, the identity of them (Native Americans, African Americans, the latest immigrants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, women, LGTBQs, the disabled, and always the poor) has been fluid, as suits the political exigencies of the moment, but the core principle and morality is consistent.

“In just one day, Donald Trump managed to stir more hatred by re-tweeting extremist anti-Muslim videos and defend proposed tax gifts to the already obscenely wealthy by promising to help struggling workers by curtailing government benefits to people who do not work. “Welfare reform, I see it, and I’ve talked to people,” he said. “I know people that work three jobs and they live next to somebody who doesn’t work at all. And the person who is not working at all and has no intention of working at all is making more money and doing better than the person that’s working his and her ass off.”

“The New Deal and perhaps later the Great Society, marked the American apotheosis of institutionalizing–through collective government action– the moral principle that that everyone is worthy of a decent life. Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and myriad other programs all represented the idea that people should not be left to fend for themselves in difficult times and circumstances. All manner of health, safety, environmental, and financial regulations were all enacted to protect people from unrestrained profiteers without concern for the wellbeing of others. Voting, civil and labor laws were enacted to move the nation closer to its founding principle, the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“Republicans aim to undo it all. That is indecent.”

He is appalled by what Trump and the Republican Party are doing. They are crushing the lives and rights of millions of people while sanctimoniously claiming that they are doing the opposite.

How long can we stand for their lies, hypocrisy, indecency, and malice?

Let our anger turn into resolve, into determination to reverse the damage they are inflicting.

Join the Indisibles. Support the Flippables, a group of young people who crowd-source funding to flip seats from red yo blue.

Target: 2018.

Model: Virginia.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Inequity, Injustice

South Carolina: State Supreme Court Turns School Funding Case Over to Legislature

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2017 //
3

In South Carolina, funding for schools is both inadequate and inequitable.

Blogger Jean Jacques CrawB writes “They are destroying our children.”

“Evidently the current Supreme Court of the state of South Carolina has no trouble decimating our schools for the sake of some political purpose. The Abbeville equity case has gone on since 1992. It was finally decided in 2014 by a 3-2 vote affirming the plaintiff’s contention that the funding system is unfair and inequitable.

“Now, in the last few months of 2017, having replaced two judges, the Supremes now say, by a 3-2 vote that they are relinquishing control of the case and giving it back to the legislature to attend to. The court also praised the legislature for what they have already done. No one here can figure out what large things have been done to ameliorate the lack of resources and the lack of qualified teachers in rural school districts.

“South Carolina educators have not been aggressive in their lobbying efforts. The Abbeville case was their greatest hope for a reversal of policies that always disadvantaged poor and rural schools. As a simple example: whenever funds are dispersed in some sort of novel way, the condition of dispersal is the number of children in the district. Therefore, a small rural district might get an increase of $100 per student and in the same distribution a wealthy district would get the same amount per person.”

Categories Funding, Inequity, Injustice

Paul Thomas: The Political and Judicial Abandonment of Poor and Black Children in South Carolina

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2017 //
6

Paul Thomas summarizes the long conservative tradition of racism and classicism in South Carolina, once the property of the Democrats, now the domain of Republicans.

The politicians never wanted to spend money on black and poor children. Even the judiciary says it’s time to stop throwing money at schools, which has never happened.

“SC public schools (and public universities, in fact) exist in 2017 as a bold middle finger to everything promised by a democratic nation. But despite the political rhetoric, SC has failed its public schools; public schools have not failed our state, whose political leaders care none at all about poor, black, or brown children being currently (and historically) mis-served by K-12 education….

“Political and judicial negligence in SC—a microcosm of the same negligence nationally—remains entrenched in commitments to ideology over evidence, hard truths neither political leadership nor judicial pronouncements will admit.

“First, and foremost, one hard truth is that public schools in SC are mostly labeled failures or successes based on the coincidence of what communities and students those schools serve. Schools serving affluent (and mostly white) communities and students are framed as “good” schools while schools serving poor (and often black and brown while also over-serving English language learners and students with special needs) communities and students are framed as “bad” or “failing.”

“This political lie is grounded in the three-decades political charade called education reform—a bureaucratic nightmare committed to accountability, standards, and testing as well as a false promise that in-school only reform could somehow overcome the negative consequences of social inequity driven by systemic racism, classism, and sexism.

“The ironic and cruel lesson of education reform has been that education is not the great equalizer.

“Education reform is nothing more than a conservative political fetish, a gross good-ol’-boy system of lies and deception.

“Second, and in most ways secondary, another hard truth is that while education is not the great equalizer, public schooling tends to reflect and then perpetuate the inequities that burden the lives of vulnerable children.

“In-school only reform driven by accountability, standards, and testing fails by being both in-school only (no education reform will rise about an absence of social/policy reform that addresses racism and poverty) and mechanisms of inequity themselves.

“Affluent and white students are apt to experience a higher quality of formal schooling than black, brown, and poor students, who tend to be tracked early and often into reduced conditions that include test-prep, “basic” courses, and teachers who are early career and often un-/under-certified.

“Nested in this hard truth is that much of accountability-based education reform depends on high-stakes standardized testing, which is itself a deeply flawed and biased instrument. Tests allow political negligence since data appear to be objective and scientific; in fact, standardized testing remains race, class, and gender biased.

“Like school quality, test scores are mostly a reflection of non-academic factors.”

Bottom line: racism and classism.

Categories Inequity, Injustice, Poverty, Racism, South Carolina

Thanksgiving: Giving to the Richest Amongst Us

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2017 //
15

Today is Thanksgiving Day, and some will sit down to bounteous meals while others will line up at soup kitchens or go hungry. That’s America 2017.

It is a day for giving and a day for thanks. One way to Give is to volunteer at a soup kitchen at a local church. You will be glad you did. You will truly understand that it is better to give than to receive. You will learn to count your blessings.

The 1% can give thanks to the Republican Congress. Its tax plan will make them much, much richer, while shutting down deductions and tax credits that help students, teachers, and the middle class.

How will the rich benefit?

Here is one analysis, written by Ulrich Boser and Abel McDaniels of the Center for American Progress.

“Under the tax plan currently before Congress, billionaires like U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would save hundreds of millions of dollars. A new analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund suggests that the money used to give DeVos and her family just one of these tax breaks would be enough to pay more than 6,000 teachers. Similarly, the money used to give President Donald Trump and his family an enormous tax break would be enough to pay more than 20,000 teachers.

“CAPAF’s analysis underscores how the House GOP plan will drain federal revenues. Yet, Betsy DeVos is one of several cabinet members who would reap millions as a result of the House Republican plan to eliminate taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. The plan also caps the tax rate on the income of wealthy owners of businesses like Amway, which the DeVos family owns.

“While many have examined how the plan will hurt ordinary working families and concentrate economic power in the largest corporations and the ultrawealthy, the magnitude of the tax cuts for the wealthy is difficult to understand. To put the effects of these cuts in perspective, CAPAF calculated the tax breaks that Betsy Devos and Donald Trump and their families would gain from just one provision of this plan and compared the value of those tax breaks to the cost of providing teachers for the nation’s students.

“For the analysis in this column, the authors relied on the previously mentioned CAPAF column, as well as the U.S. Department of Education’s 2016 allocations for selected programs and the Michigan Department of Education’s 2017 allocations to determine the amount of the state’s 21st Century Learning Centers grant and Title II grant awards, and divided the estate tax gain DeVos’s heirs would see by these numbers. The authors also used the average public school teacher salary determined by the National Center for Education Statistics, and the median bus driver salary determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and divided the estate tax gain the Trump family would see by those numbers.

“To be clear: The federal estate tax does not fund state teacher and bus driver salaries; however, the comparison provides a concrete way of understanding the magnitude of just one of the many tax breaks for the wealthy contained in the House and Senate tax plans.

“DeVos’ family would gain $351 million from the estate tax repeal, according to the CAPAF analysis. The DeVos’ tax break amounts to more than five times the amount of federal money her home state of Michigan received for teacher professional development. Alternatively, the amount of the DeVos’ estate tax break alone could fund afterschool programs in Michigan for about 10 years. Or, that amount could pay the salaries of more than 6,000 badly needed public school teachers.

“Repealing the estate tax will give Trump’s heirs a $1.15 billion tax break, according to CAPAF’s calculations. That revenue would be enough to pay the salaries of more than 20,000 public school teachers, or more than 36,000 bus drivers, of which there is a shortage. Again, federal estate tax revenues do not fund state public employee salaries, but the comparison is useful for understanding how large the proposed tax cuts for the wealthy are.

“The Trump-McConnell-Ryan plan contains other provisions that do directly impact public schools. For example, the proposed expansion of college savings accounts will siphon money away from public schools. Wealthy families would be able to avoid paying taxes on thousands of dollars used for private school tuition. EdChoice, a conservative-leaning advocacy organization which actually supports the provision, admits the proposal is “not a solution for every family” and this is especially true “for families with limited means.””

It is a Reverse Robin Hood Tax Plan. Take from hard-working middle-income families and give to the undeserving rich.

For those white working class people who voted for Trump, please notice that you will get crumbs from his bounteous table at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by friends who paid $200,000 to join his club.

Categories Billionaires, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice

Vicki Cobb: Literacy, Politics, and Racism

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2017 //
14

Vicki Cobb, writer of children’s books, writes here about the appearance of Professor David Omotoso Stovall of the University of Illinois at the New York State Reading Association conference in upstate New York.

He “gave an electrifying keynote address to an audience of mostly white, mostly female and mostly middle-aged reading teachers. The gist of his statement was that literacy, the ability to read, was a political act that was the first step in empowering children to be thoughtful citizens. It could also disrupt the famous Chicago inner-city Public Schools’ reputation of being a pipeline to prison. Adorable black and brown five-year-olds enter buildings with metal detectors, gray walls, and barred windows. Stovall questions what message that sends to these beginning learners. How many of these young human beings discover the joy of learning in this environment? Dr. Stovall is a literacy activist for all children. He was hoping to enlist some of these New York teachers in understanding that literacy is the underlying responsibility of a free government. That they are, indeed, on the front lines.

We live in a free society where public policies are supposed to evolve from public discourse that is predicated on an informed electorate. David Stovall’s work rethinks how schools are currently managed so that the love of reading is not present even if children can decode words on a page. I decided to interview him about his thoughts on how to change the system to bring inner-city children into university spaces.”

What follows is her interview. You will enjoy reading it.

Categories Inequity, Racism

Arthur Camins: School Choice is a Fraud, the Same Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2017 //
25

Arthur Camins retired recently as Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology. He has taught and been an administrator in New York City, Massachusetts, and Louisville, Kentucky. Unlike Betsy Dezvos and other ersatz “reformers,” he knows quite a lot about teaching and innovation.

In this post, he explains the fraud of school choice.

He writes:

“Segregation and the evil twins–racism and inequity– are the divide and conquer gifts that keep on giving­ to the rich and taking from everyone else. Over the decades, the wealthy and empowered have found ways to dress up their barely concealed essential messages: We deserve what we have. Inequality is the natural order of the world. Caring about others is for losers. Winners care about themselves. If you are unhappy with your station in life, blame yourself. Some of you would be better off if was it not for Them.

“The latest incarnation of message obfuscation is the vaguely democratic-sounding term, school choice. The push for expansion of charter schools- publicly funded, but privately controlled– and for vouchers to offset a portion of the tuition for private schools is the old wolf in new sheep’s clothing.

“Equity and universal high quality have never been the goals of school choice, the roots of which are resistance to desegregation. Its latest advocates do not suggest vouchers so that the poor can attend elite, expensive private schools. They do not demand adequate funding for all schools. They do not want to give students experience interacting with one another across class or race. They certainly do not want to end the defining characteristic of the status quo, rationing of quality by socioeconomic status.

“Their rhetoric notwithstanding, they have other goals: Undermine public sector unions to reduce their political power, as well as members’ pay and health and retirement benefits; Pander to subgroups to undermine political unity; Undercut the power of unified organizing by offering an escape hatch for the so-called “deserving poor.” Advance the advantages of privilege.

“Segregation is the simple enabling strategy. Contrary to popular mythology, post-Brown v. Board of education segregation was not so much the product of individual choices, but rather intentionally segregative transportation, zoning, housing and employment policies. Policy and preexisting bias were mutually reinforcing. Increased isolation was the inevitable result. People naturally trust folks they know and interact with regularly. Economic and racial isolation turns the distant “them” into an abstraction, easily stereotyped in the absence of countervailing evidence informed by direct contact and shared struggle. It is the empowered’s Tower of Babel tactic. Sow distrust and hatred, so that even when diverse citizens speak the same language, building for the common good becomes too challenging and threatening….

“Rather than addressing the structural causes of growing inequity, appeals to market-based education play on parents’ anxieties about their children losing out in the intense competition for well-paying jobs. Similarly, school choice rhetoric reinforces some parents’ bias that going to school with certain others will hurt their children. It encourages parents to take a belligerent, you can’t-make-me, stance…

“Coupled with the exaltation of selfishness, segregation is a time-tested way for the privileged to remain in control. School choice is the latest euphemism for leaving everyone to fend for themselves in a dystopian world of ruthless competition.

“When centrists Democrats adopt choice rhetoric, they abet conservative ideology. They enable labeling of legislative solutions to help people as being about Them, not us. If the last presidential election is any indication, Democratic politicians are reluctant to take on the rhetoric of choice and the segregation and inequity it supports. That will only change when voters demand that candidates adopt a different, explicitly pro-integration, stance.

“It is time to bring back the old labor slogan: An injury to one is an injury to all.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bias, Charter Schools, Inequity, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: The Frightening Long-Term Goal of Betsy DeVos: MUST-READ!

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2017 //
62

Jennifer Berkshire says that critics of Betsy DeVos and her family were wrong to write her off as a dummy. She has a long-term plan and is steadily moving towards it. Privatization of public schools is on her check list. Destruction of unions is on the list. Elimination of any restrictions on campaign cash is there. The long-term target is democracy. Not more of it. Elimination of it. Oligarchy.

Berkshire writes:

“If Betsy DeVos enjoys the occasional quaff of champagne on her private jet, the recent news that the Supreme Court is poised to deliver a knock-out blow to public sector unions presented a reason to celebrate. The announcement was made just hours before DeVos alit in Harvard Square last week, where she was the star attraction at a school choice conference. At Harvard’s Kennedy School, DeVos was met by one of the largest protests she has encountered to date: an all-ages demonstration vs just about everything Trump’s Secretary of Education has said and done during the past seven months. Inside, the event was tense, even hostile—another rocky outing in a tenure replete with them. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom.

“Turning red

“The latest Supreme Court case to take aim at the unions, Janus vs AFSCME Council 31, began two years ago with a suit filed by yet another right-wing billionaire: Illinois’ Bruce Rauner. While it is framed by conservatives as a case about individual rights and freedom, the aptly named “Janus” is about politics and power. Public sector unions, virtually the only ones left, provide the bank and the foot soldiers that get Democrats elected. At their best, they’ve spearheaded progressive causes that go far beyond the interests of their members. In Massachusetts, the teachers unions have been the driving force behind successful campaigns for a minimum wage hike, paid sick time for all workers, and are now pushing a tax on millionaires. The unions are also virtually the last organized defense of what’s left of our safety net—Social Security and Medicare; the right wants those next.

“Just days before DeVos appeared at Harvard, she was back in Michigan, taking what was essentially a victory lap. She exhorted the crowd at a conservative gathering on Mackinac Island to pat themselves on the back for the Mitten State’s having gone Republican in the 2016 Presidential election—the first time since 1988. “We in Michigan have a lot to be proud of, but nothing more than that,” DeVos said. The story of just how the DeVos’ pulled off the feat of turning Michigan red is long and ugly, involving mountains of cash, the steady erosion of representative democracy, and a decades-long effort to dismember the state’s once powerful teachers union: the Michigan Education Association.

“Michigan went right-to-work in 2012, ushered into the former cradle of industrial unionism via the DeVos’ trademark combo of political arm twisting and largesse. Another DeVos-inspired law made it illegal for employers, including school districts, to process union dues, while simultaneously making it easier for corporations to deduct PAC money from employee paychecks. This summer the DeVos’ succeeded in driving a final nail into the MEA’s coffin: the GOP-controlled legislature essentially eliminating pensions, among the last tangible benefits that teachers in Michigan receive from their unions. The union leaders I spoke to when I traveled through the state reporting on DeVos’ legacy were candid about the increasingly precarious state of their organizations. But far worse lies ahead. The demise of retirement benefits means that new teachers have little incentive to join the unions; the shrinking terrain of collective bargaining gives veteran teachers little reason to remain in them.”

Dark Money is winning. Betsy is its face. That’s why she always smiles, no matter how many protestors complain. She is pinning their wings in her scrapbook.

Democracy is in deep trouble.

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Dark Money, Democracy, Inequity, Injustice, Unions

Ann Waldman: Vermont’s Voucher Program Pays Tuition at Elite Boarding Schools

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
10

Voucher advocates like to point to Vermont as the nation’s oldest program. When it was started in 1869, it was intended to pay the tuition of students whose town did not have a public school. It has very little in common with the curren voucher movement, which takes its inspiration from the libertarian economist Milton Friedman, who wrote a seminal essay in 1955 proposing that all students should receive vouchers to attend the school of their choice. The group that was fastest to seize upon his ideas was Southern segregationists, who saw school choice as an effective way to keep their schools racially segregated. It took a dozen years until the federal courts and the U.S. Department of Education compelled Southern schools to desegregate their schools.

Meanwhile, Vermont’s voucher program continued undisturbed.

Today as education writer Anne Waldman of ProPublica explains, the voucher program funds a disproportionately large number of students from affluent families who choose expensive private schools, including out-of-state boarding schools like Exeter and Deerfield Academy.

“Vermont’s voucher program is a microcosm of what could happen across the country if school-choice advocates such as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos achieve their vision. By subsidizing part of the cost of private schools in or out of state, it broadens options for some Vermonters while diverting students from public education and disproportionately benefiting wealthier families like the Bowmans.

“Vermont vouchers have been used to send students to ski academies, out-of-state art schools and even foreign boarding schools, such as the Sigtunaskolan School in Sweden, whose alumni include Sweden’s current king and former prime minister. Vermont paid more than $40 million in vouchers to more than 60 private schools last year, including more than $1.3 million to out-of-state schools, according to data received from the state’s education agency through a public-records request.

“Of the almost 2,800 Vermonters who use publicly funded vouchers to go to private schools in state, 22.5 percent qualify for free or reduced price lunch, according to state education data. (The data excludes out-of-state private schools.) By contrast, 38.3 percent of public school students in Vermont have family incomes low enough to qualify them for the lunch discount.”

Voucher advocates in other states will insist that they want vouchers for poor black and Hispanic students or for students with disabilities.

Such claims, however, are the first step towards the goal of making vouchers available for everyone.

Vermont sets no income limit for students who choose to use vouchers. However, the vouchers may not be used in religious schools, because the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1999.

Betsy DeVos has said many times that she seeks vouchers for every kind of school, including religious schools. Private and religiousschools set their own admissions requirements, so the schools choose the students. Public schools are required by law to accept all students, regardless of race, religion, family income, sexual orientation, language or disability status.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Inequity, Religion, School Choice, Vermont, Vouchers

Linda Lyons: DeVos is Intent on Reviving State-Sponsored Discrimination

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2017 //
20

Lina Lyons is president-elect of the Arizona School Boards Association.

She writes here about the spurious claim that school choice is the answer to all problems.

She says that the nevitable result of school choice will not be better education, but segregation by race, class, ethnicity, and socioeconomic.

Yet DeVos continues to evade any federal responsibility for promoting desegregation and evades any federal responsibility for discouraging discrimination.

She writes:

“Some parents don’t know best. There. I said it. Let’s face it, some parents aren’t present, some are abusive, and some are drug addicts. Then there are those who are trying their damnedest to provide for their children but their minimum wage jobs (without benefits) just don’t pay enough to make ends meet. Bottom line is, not all parents know how, or care enough to provide, the best they can for their children. Where that is the case, or, when hard working parents need a little help, it is up to all of us in a civil society, to ensure all children are safe and that their basic needs are met. As education reformer John Dewey said over a century ago, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

“Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos evidently doesn’t agree. In recent testimony to Congress, no matter what question she was asked about how far states would be allowed to go in discriminating against certain types of students, she kept deflecting to “states rights” and “parental rights,” failing to say at any point in the testimony that she would ensure states receiving federal dollars would not discriminate. From watching her testimony, if she had been the Secretary of Education with Donald Trump as President back in the early 1960s, the Alabama National Guard would undoubtedly never have been called up to integrate the schools.

“This should surprise no one. After all, the entire school reform agenda is really about promoting survival of the fittest. Those who “have” and already do well, will be set up for even more success while those dealing with the challenges poverty presents, will continue to suffer. As far as Betsy DeVos is concerned, the U.S. Department of Education has no responsibility to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, gender identity. The hell with Brown vs. Board of Education, she will not step in to ensure states do the right thing for their students. As Jack Covey wrote recently to Diane Ravitch, to Betsy, “choice” is everything and parents should be able to send their children to a black-free, LGBT-free, or Muslim-free school on the taxpayer’s dime if they want to.

“Does that EVEN sound remotely like America to you? How can it be okay for our tax dollars to promote blatant discrimination? This is essentially state-sponsored discrimination. Yes, discrimination has always occurred via self-funded choice. The wealthy have always been able to keep their children away from the rest of us but, it was on their own dime. As it has always been with parents who stretched budgets to live in neighborhoods with the “best” school district as a way to ensure their child had the best chance.”

There were many reasons to oppose Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Add another: she has no intention of using federal dollars to enforce the laws barring discrimination.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bias, Civil Rights, Democracy, Inequity, Racism, School Choice, Segregation
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