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Capitol & Main: How Betsy DeVos Crushes Moderate Republicans Who Get in Her Way

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2017 //
11

Danny Feingold writes in Capitol & Main about Betsy DeVos’ hardline education ideology and the ruthless way she uses her family money to smash those who don’t go along with her wishes.

How Betsy DeVos Ignored and Targeted Michigan Republicans to Advance Her Hardline Education Ideology

DeVos wants choice. She loves vouchers but thus far has been able to impose them in Michigan because the state constitution prohibits spending public money for religious schools.

So charters are her favorite route to a free market of schooling in Michigan. When s bipartisan coalition tried to pass a bill to impose accountability on charters, the DeVos money machine went into high gear to block it.

Contrary to what DeVos told the Senate HELP Committee, she believes in accountability for public schools but not for charter schools. She certainly opposes accountability for religious schools that accept vouchers.

She doesn’t believe in separation of church and state, nor does she think that public schools have a greater claim on public dollars than for-profit charters or backwoods one-room schools run by uneducated preachers without certified teachers.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if DeVos gets her way, sends federal funds to church schools, and a future Secretary of Education and Congress declares that all schools receiving federal funds are subject to the same tests, the same mandates, and the same regulations as public schools?

Religious leaders will regret that they mingled church and state.

Some religious leaders recognize the importance of separating church and state and are fighting against privatization, such as Pastors for Texas Children and Pastors for Oklahoma Kids. May their movement spread across the land.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Michigan, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Politico: Opposition to DeVos “Snowballs into an Avalanche”

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2017 //
25

Politico reports that the offices of Republican Senators are overwhelmed with letters, emails, and faxes opposing Betsy DeVos, according to Politico. She is the most controversial and unpopular cabinet choice of Trump, and Senators have been overwhelmed by negative comments. Most of them have gone into hiding. Their phone lines are jammed or off the hook.

The reasons for the avalanche of opposition:

1. She is unqualified, having no experience as a parent, student, teacher, or local board member in a public school, which 85% of American students attend 10% in private schools and 5% in privately owned charter schools).

2. She is a lobbyist for privatization of public schools.

3. As she demonstrated in her Senate hearings, she is ignorant of federal law and policy.

4. She is hostile to public schools.

5. If appointed, she will transfer federal funds from public schools to non-public schools.

6. She uses her vast fortune to buy votes of Republican senators.

Parents care about their children and their schools and communities. They object to a Secretary of Education who doesn’t care about their public schools and will hurt their children and their communities while prattling about “great schools.” Indeeed, they may even be aware of the damage DeVos has already done to the public schools of Michigan.

If no Republican breaks ranks, voters must remember in November: 2018, 2020, and 2022. Actions have consequences.

Why in the world does the GOP stand fast behind a nominee who is so clearly uninformed? Could it be the millions she and her family have given them? As DeVos once said, we do expect something in return for our money. Payback day arrived and she is getting what she paid for.

Trump has nominated many people who were unfitted to the mission of their Department, like Dr. Carson for HUD, Scott Pruitt for EPA. But DeVos! Our public schools are at risk.

It is not the grizzly bears that are alarmed by DeVos. It’s the Mama Bears. They protect their cubs.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, For-Profit, Fraud, Michigan, Parents, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Phyllis Bush: The Expensive Hoax of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2017 //
24

Phyllis Bush is a retired educator and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

She writes here about the hidden cost of vouchers, which are a gift of public dollars to private schools with no accountability.

Here is an excerpt:

Vouchers drain state tax dollars from the entire education funding pot. This often causes district budgeting deficits and/or the need for tax increases, referendums and the like. That loss of revenue to public schools increases class sizes and diminishes student resources such as counselors, support personnel, supplemental materials and buses.

From the vantage point of a traditional public school supporter, vouchers are a gift of taxpayer funds given to private schools without any accountability. Additionally, the expansion of choice is creating two separate school systems. In this parallel system, one pathway will be for those who can afford quality choices. The other pathway will be to an underfunded, separate-but-unequal road, marked by poverty and by zip codes. As most people know, public schools are required to accept all students while “choice schools” have the option of choosing the students who fit their agenda. Choice schools are allowed to reject students with behavior issues, students with low scores, students with disabilities, and students who don’t speak English.

The probable result of this further expansion of choice schools will be that the children with the most difficulties will be housed in the least well-financed schools. Sadly, many legislators have chosen to be willfully unaware of the consequences of “school choice.”

While the reformers and the takeover artists and the hedge fund managers talk and talk and talk about the miraculous results of school choice, research shows that these results are uneven at best. As thoughtful citizens and taxpayers, wouldn’t it be prudent if we asked ourselves what is best for our traditional public schools, our communities and our kids?

Perhaps the fundamental question is what does society stand to lose in the name of “school choice?” Whose choice is it, anyway?”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Indiana, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

John Thompson: When the Choice Roadshow Came to Oklahoma, Led by Dr. Perry

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2017 //
15

John Thompson is a historian and teacher in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma School Choice Week: The “Red Pill” Targets a Red State

The OK School Choice Summit featured Sen. Mark Loveless who, in part, promotes charters and vouchers as a means of spreading chaos in public school systems. His donor, Betsy DeVos’ the American Federation for Children, was also well represented. DeVos sees school choice as a path to “greater Kingdom gain.”

School choice: Sen. Loveless advances ‘factually incorrect’ ideology

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-education-trump-religion-232150

There had been about 20 anti-corporate reform protesters at the summit, so even though I had registered for the event, I was apparently supposed to be denied entry. By the time I arrived, the police outnumbered the protesters. As some protesters chatted amiably with the summit volunteers, I schmoozed with some pro-reform political leaders who let me walk in with them.

School Choice Summit features firebrand speaker, draws protests

At the time, I didn’t realize that we who opposed the expansion of charters and vouchers could not be tolerated because we had supposedly swallowed the “blue pill,” and that made us irredeemable.

Ordinarily I get along with conservative Christians by not questioning the religious beliefs of people who support people like DeVos, who see charters and vouchers as a means to “advance God’s Kingdom.” That is one reason why I was completely unprepared for what I’d see when Dr. Steve Perry gave the summit’s keynote address.

Okay, I know I’ve failed to fully grapple with the hate that drives many corporate reform supporters, as well as Trumpism as a whole. I assumed that the summit organizers probably knew how Perry became famous by condemning unions as “cockroaches.” But, surely the audience wasn’t conversant with the research of former Connecticut Deputy House Majority Leader, Jonathan Pelto, and they didn’t know that Perry’s charter school would sentence “even the youngest students in the building, to sit at the cafeteria’s ‘Table of Shame.’”

I’ve long known a lot of the charter supporters in the audience, and I didn’t think they would approve of his desire to:

Drag sorry principals and teachers out into the street. Kick open the doors in our communities and collar lazy parents. Line ‘em all up on Main Street, snatch their pants down and show the entire world the ass that they have given our kids to kiss.

Neither would the audience know that by 2014 that Perry had called Diane Ravitch a racist in at least 49 tweets.

http://jonathanpelto.com/2014/03/11/crazy-sht-capital-prep-steve-perry-said/

I sat down next to an old friend who supports charters and vouchers, and we shook hands. Perry immediately started yelling into the microphone, telling the audience that they should have no contact with people (like me) who oppose charter and voucher expansion. Perry said that opponents of Oklahoma City’s KIPP expansion are racists. He said that people (like me) who have Obama bumper stickers but oppose charter and voucher expansion are as bad as the worst racists in American history. Perry said that that public school supporters “designed” schools to fail, and to maintain Jim Crow and drive the school to prison pipeline.

Perry said virtually nothing about actual schools. At first, I assumed that Perry avoided real education issues because his fictional narrative about founding Capital Preparatory Magnet School had been debunked so thoroughly. After all, Perry’s charter has “fewer students who qualify for Free Lunch, fewer kids with disabilities, and fewer kids who are ELL than neighboring high schools in Hartford.” The charter has high attrition rates and teacher turnover. The reliable Rutgers University scholar, Mark Weber, shows how Perry’s charter had “lower increases in student performance in comparison to comparable schools.”

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/05/dr-steve-perry-final-debunk.html

But Perry explained that we are in The Matrix. Choice supporters had supposedly taken the “red pill.” Only they live in the “real world;” presumably that justifies any tactic necessary to defeat those of us who are deluded because we took the “blue pill.”

To say the least, the event was frightening. The largely white crowd loudly cheered Perry’s union-bashing and they clearly enjoyed being characterized as civil rights crusaders attacking Obama-lovers whose real goal is defending an education system which was designed to perpetuate Jim Crow.

Afterwards, I implored pro-charter friends in the crowd, asking them to renounce Perry’s hate speech. He had repeatedly said that people like me are as bad as the worst racists in American history. Do you approve of that?

One true believer in charters replied that Perry charged him up in order to better battle for choice. Another acknowledged the hateful side of the diatribe but said that I wasn’t hearing Perry’s thoughtful words. One kept replying that Perry was saying that poor children of color were being damaged by choice opponents, but he wasn’t saying we did that intentionally. He finally acknowledged that Perry was saying that the damage that people like me did to kids is by design, and he was wrong to attack us in this manner. None agreed to publicly distance themselves from Perry.

But that is not what scared me so much. Of course I’ve seen videos of demagogues firing up audiences. As a kid too young to understand, I’d witnessed John Birch Society and George Wallace rallies. But, as an adult, I’d never seen anything as frightening as the way Perry worked the crowd.

I still deny that rank-in-file charter supporters are bad people. No longer can I deny, however, that many of them crave the overall message that Perry delivers. The crowd wouldn’t have been so open to the claim that we who disagree with them are evil if they weren’t hungry for a fight. For reasons that must be bigger than education reform, many of them must be ready for battle, and they crave the message that they are righteous crusaders and their enemies deserve to be destroyed.

Categories Oklahoma, School Choice

Please Send a Tweet to Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska @Senatorfischer

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2017 //
46

Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska is the deciding vote on the nomination of Betsy DeVos.

Apparently DeVos promised not to force vouchers and charters on Nebraska. But, Senator Fischer is making a decision that will affect every state in the nation, not just Nebraska. State’s like North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, the Rust Belt, the Deep South, the Midwest will see hundreds of millions–nay, billions–of public funds taken away from public schools and transferred to religious schools with no certified teachers and to charter schools that are neither accountable nor transparent, with academic performance no better than public schools and possibly worse.

Senator Fischer’s mother was a public school teacher. Senator Fischer served on her local school board and was president of the Nebraska School Boards Association.

Please reach out to her. Her twitter handle is @senatorfischer.

She needs to know that the future of public education in America hangs in the balance.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Billionaire Eli Broad Opposes DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2017 //
29

Does anyone care? A day late and many dollars short, charter champion Eli Broad came out in opposition to Betsy DeVos.

Why did he wait until after she passed the GOP-controlled Senate committee? She has been under discussion for two months. Why the silence when it might have mattered?

Is he trying to protect charters from competition with vouchers?

Does he want to protect the charter brand from being mingled with the Trump brand?

Whatever his motive, he is not acting to protect public schools.

Would you rather be privatized by charter or voucher? Would you rather be hung or shot?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Henry Levin: School Choice Increases Segregation Without Improving Achievement

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2017 //
9

Henry Levin, the William Heard Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, has studied school choice and privatization around the world. Levin says there is no evidence for the efficacy of these strategies.

http://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-01-30/little-global-evidence-suggests-school-choice-helps-performance

Levin writes:

“Some have argued that competitive incentives induced by school choice will lead to better educational outcomes. However, there is little evidence to support this claim.

“Sweden has had an educational voucher system since 1992, but its achievement levels on international tests have been falling for two decades. Chile has had such a system since 1980, and there is little evidence of improvement in achievement relative to countries at similar levels of income. Cleveland, Milwaukee, and the District of Columbia have issued vouchers to low-income families, but sophisticated evaluations find no difference between achievement in private voucher schools and public schools with similar student populations. Students from low-income families in Louisiana who have used vouchers to shift from public to private schools have experienced striking reductions in achievement gains relative to similar students in public schools…..

“In England there has been a dramatic shift from schools governed by public councils to academies run by private groups with great autonomy and the ability to select their own students. The results on student achievement show no distinct advantage, and there are similar results for U.S. charter schools based upon careful statistical comparisons.

“Where school choice has shown powerful effects around the world is the systematic separation of students by ethnicity, social class and religion.

“Sweden’s vouchers have increased segregation by social class and immigrant status. Chile’s voucher system has produced one of the most segregated system of schools in the world by family income. In the Netherlands, studies of the school choice system have pointed to school separation of students by ethnicity, immigrant status and family income. A Brookings Institution study found that U.S. charter schools are more segregated racially and socio-economically than public schools in surrounding areas. The Program for International Student Assessment, an important triennial study of international student performance, finds school segregation by social class is associated with school choice.

“Although even public schools have segregation challenges typically caused by residential location, school choice tends to streamline the racial, social class and ethnic isolation of students, as well as separate them by political ideology and religion.”

Categories International, School Choice, Vouchers

This Parent Chooses the Local Public School

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2017 //
4

Bertis Downs is a public school parent in Athens, Georgia. He is also an activist for public education and a member of the board of Network for Oublic Education. He wrote this column about why he and his wife chose their local public schools, published by Valerie Strauss on the Answer Sheet blog.

 

Downs wonders why elected officials don’t acknowledge the obvious fact that most people choose the local community public schools, not private schools, not charter schools, not religious schools.

 

He writes:

 

“There are excellent schools in every neighborhood in America? After all, the vast majority of America’s schoolchildren attend public schools.

 

“Why aren’t “community schools” — which seek to address the many out-of-school factors that effect achievement — a leading reform choice? Could it be that those are public school models that don’t profit anyone other than the communities of students they educate?

 

“Among the many great things about our country’s public schools is their resilience. Most of our public schools do a good job of educating our nation’s children — despite relentless political and media attacks that blame teachers and schools for poor student performance while ignoring out-of-school factors that affect how children do in school.

 

“My own kids have had caring and committed public school teachers, wonderful extracurricular opportunities, great friends, and bright futures as members of their diverse and challenging school communities (in Georgia in our case). Every student should have that choice. What kids everywhere need is love and support at home and at school, wisdom and inspiration from well-trained teachers, and a rich and diverse curriculum that focuses on them as unique children.

 

“In the era of high-stakes standardized tests — with scores unfairly used to make important decisions about the future of kids, teachers, principals, schools and even districts — many kids have effectively become “testing drones.” Students deserve a curriculum rich in the arts and cultural context. They deserve to attend schools centered in and supported by their community, with enough funding for adequate facilities, reasonable class sizes, and knowledgeable and fulfilled teachers.

 

“These things occur in countries that believe in systemic improvement — and they are possible here too, but only if we have the courage and political will to properly fund school districts, create exciting and smart curriculum and address out-of-school factors that affect student academic performance.”

 

 

Categories School Choice

Vet to Senator Alexander: The GI Bill Has Nothing to Do with K-12 Education

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2017 //
16

Senator Lamar Alexander likes to say that vouchers for religious and private schools are akin to a “GI Bill of Rights for Children,” a transfer of public funds to be spent anywhere.

 

But this reader is a beneficiary of the actual GI Bill and he says the analogy is wrong:

 

 

“I felt compelled to write this today after seeing Senator Alexander’s efforts to normalize Betsy Devos’ extreme ideas about public education.

 

“Dear Senator Lamar Alexander. STOP COMPARING SCHOOL VOUCHERS TO THE GI BILL.

 

“You are defending Betsy Devos and her goal to change public education into a system of private vouchers by saying that school vouchers are just like the GI BILL.

 

“The GI bill was a special benefit to support veterans returning to civilian life. I know, because the GI bill made it possible for me to make it through college after the Vietnam war. This one time benefit for soldiers is far different than our public responsibility to provide for the education of the children in our communities. Each state’s constitution defines this public responsibility to provide for and oversee the compulsory education of the children in their state.

 

“Our public responsibility to educate our youth is not the same thing as going to the grocery store to buy groceries. It is not about consumer choice. It’s about responsibility. Each community has the responsibility to create an equitable, safe, quality education for all of the children in their community. This responsibility includes providing an education that will enable students to become proficient in basic skills as well as to develop the habits and citizenship skills necessary to participate in our diverse democracy.

 

“The entire public contributes to the common good for the children of the state, even if they have no children. Along with this responsibility is the expectation that students will receive a quality public education. I am contributing my public tax dollars to public education, not so a family down the street can feel entitled to send their child to private or religious school because the local school is not to their liking. If they are unhappy with their public schools, they can work with their locally elected officials. They can also choose to provide their own private school or home school their child. That’s their job and responsibility. In my community our school board offers both traditional as well as alternative schools and resources for home school families.

 

 

“The choice movement wants to take away this public responsibility and oversight. All they want from the public is their tax dollars. They want private choice, not public choice, and they want you to pay for it.

 

“Senator Alexander and Betsy Devos do not understand this sacred responsibility.”

Categories School Choice, Vouchers

Carol Burris: The True Costs of School Choice

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2017 //
14

Carol Burris has been traveling the nation investigating states where choice is flourishing –and public schools are being underfunded to pay for choice.

 

She reports here that the public has little idea of the waste, fraud, and abuse that is embedded in the school choice movement.

 

Many taxpayers don’t know that every dollar that goes to a charter or a voucher is subtracted from the community public schools.

 

She asks the billion-dollar question:

 

The Washington Post published a 2013 story detailing issues at private schools that accepted public funds from the federally funded voucher program approved by Congress for the nation’s capital. It said in part:

 

[A] Washington Post review found that hundreds of students use their voucher dollars to attend schools that are unaccredited or are in unconventional settings, such as a family-run K-12 school operating out of a storefront, a Nation of Islam school based in a converted Deanwood residence, and a school built around the philosophy of a Bulgarian psychotherapist.

 

I suspect that Betsy DeVos and her followers would say that all of the above is the price we must pay to keep charters free of regulations. But if regulations are the problem, and deregulation the solution, why don’t the “choicers” push to deregulate public schools? Shouldn’t their creativity be unleashed as well?

 

Time to wise up.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers
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