Archives for category: Supporting public schools
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Thomas Ultican: America Has an Amazing Public School System, Don’t Listen to the Naysayers

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2017 //
21

Tom Ultican teaches physics in San Diego after a career in the private sector. He likes evidence. He reviews the failure of various privatization schemes. Vouchers have failed to “save” children, and voucher schools are often far worse than public schools. Charters are scandal-ridden, supported too often by profit-seekers.

He writes: American Schools Rock!

Don’t be fooled.

“By the middle of the 20th century, cities and villages throughout the USA had developed an impressive educational infrastructure. With the intent of giving every child in America the opportunity for 12 years of free education, this country was the world’s only country not using high stakes testing to deny the academic path to more than a third of its students. The physical infrastructure of our public schools was of high quality and schools were staffed with well-trained experienced educators.

“This system that is the foundation – to the greatest economy in the world, the most Nobel Prize winners and democratic government – has passed the exam of life. It is clearly the best education system in the world. To diminish and undermine it is foolhardy. Arrogant greed-blinded people are trying to steal our legacy.”

Categories Charter Schools, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Supporting public schools, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

The Promise of Public Schools: We Are in Danger of Losing It

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2017 //
53

Nicole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer for the New York Times magazine, aptly describes the perilous condition of public education, as the privatization movement moves in to kill public education. The very idea that schools should operate like businesses and that families are “consumers,” eats away at the promise of public education.

In the days leading up to and after Betsy DeVos’s confirmation as secretary of education, a hashtag spread across Twitter: #publicschoolproud. Parents and teachers tweeted photos of their kids studying, performing, eating lunch together. People of all races tweeted about how public schools changed them, saved them, helped them succeed. The hashtag and storytelling was a rebuttal to DeVos, who called traditional public schools a “dead end” and who bankrolled efforts to pass reforms in Michigan, her home state, that would funnel public funds in the form of vouchers into religious and privately operated schools and encouraged the proliferation of for-profit charter schools. The tweets railed against DeVos’s labeling of public schools as an industry that needed to adopt the free-market principles of competition and choice. #Publicschoolproud was seen as an effort to show that public schools still mattered.

But the enthusiastic defense obscured a larger truth: We began moving away from the “public” in public education a long time ago. In fact, treating public schools like a business these days is largely a matter of fact in many places. Parents have pushed for school-choice policies that encourage shopping for public schools that they hope will give their children an advantage and for the expansion of charter schools that are run by private organizations with public funds. Large numbers of public schools have selective admissions policies that keep most kids out. And parents pay top dollar to buy into neighborhoods zoned to “good” public schools that can be as exclusive as private ones. The glaring reality is, whether we are talking about schools or other institutions, it seems as if we have forgotten what “public” really means.

Public schools were supported by all, because they were for the benefit of all, whether or not they used the schools themselves, whether or not they had children.

Early on, it was this investment in public institutions that set America apart from other countries. Public hospitals ensured that even the indigent received good medical care — health problems for some could turn into epidemics for us all. Public parks gave access to the great outdoors not just to the wealthy who could retreat to their country estates but to the masses in the nation’s cities. Every state invested in public universities. Public schools became widespread in the 1800s, not to provide an advantage for particular individuals but with the understanding that shuffling the wealthy and working class together (though not black Americans and other racial minorities) would create a common sense of citizenship and national identity, that it would tie together the fates of the haves and the have-nots and that doing so benefited the nation. A sense of the public good was a unifying force because it meant that the rich and the poor, the powerful and the meek, shared the spoils — as well as the burdens — of this messy democracy.

The New Deal fostered a strong public sector, but it also was ridiculed and condemned by a small minority who resented the effort to include everyone in good works. This minority sowed the seeds of the libertarian, free-market, anti-government movement that is now controlling the federal government and many states.

She reminds us that the movement away from public schools began with segregationists who wanted to keep their all-white schools. Betsy DeVos speaks for them when she lauds school choice.

Even when they fail, the guiding values of public institutions, of the public good, are equality and justice. The guiding value of the free market is profit. The for-profit charters DeVos helped expand have not provided an appreciably better education for Detroit’s children, yet they’ve continued to expand because they are profitable — or as Tom Watkins, Michigan’s former education superintendent, said, “In a number of cases, people are making a boatload of money, and the kids aren’t getting educated.”

Democracy works only if those who have the money or the power to opt out of public things choose instead to opt in for the common good. It’s called a social contract, and we’ve seen what happens in cities where the social contract is broken: White residents vote against tax hikes to fund schools where they don’t send their children, parks go untended and libraries shutter because affluent people feel no obligation to help pay for things they don’t need. “The existence of public things — to meet each other, to fight about, to pay for together, to enjoy, to complain about — this is absolutely indispensable to democratic life,” Honig says.

If there is hope for a renewal of our belief in public institutions and a common good, it may reside in the public schools. Nine of 10 children attend one, a rate of participation that few, if any, other public bodies can claim, and schools, as segregated as many are, remain one of the few institutions where Americans of different classes and races mix. The vast multiracial, socioeconomically diverse defense of public schools that DeVos set off may show that we have not yet given up on the ideals of the public — and on ourselves.

Make no mistake: Betsy DeVos is a dedicated enemy of public schools. She threatens to destroy the educational system that produced the most powerful economy on earth. She must be resisted at every turn.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Steven Singer: The Founding Fathers Opposed School Choice

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2017 //
23

Here is a terrific post by Steven Singer, documenting what the Founding Fathers said about education.

There was no public education when they wrote the Constitution. There was private education, Dame schools, church schools, and large numbers of children who were not educated at all. Some states funded charter schools, which were private academies for wealthy children. In the early nineteenth century, not much had changed. It was a great step forward when real reformers like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard began a national campaign to persuade states to take responsibility for creating public school systems, tax-supported and staffed by qualified teachers.

The curious thing about today’s reformers is they want to return us to the olden days, with the public paying for religious schools and private schools, subsidized by taxpayers.

Singer writes:

“One of the founding principles of the United States is public education.

“We fought a bloody revolution against England for many reasons, but chief among them was to create a society where all people could be educated.

“Certainly we had disagreements about who counted as a person. Women? Probably not. Black people? Doubtful. But the ideal of providing a quality education for all was a central part of our fledgling Democracy regardless of how well we actually lived up to it.

“In fact, without it, our system of self-government just wouldn’t work. A functioning Democracy, it was thought, couldn’t exist in a nation where the common person was ignorant. We needed everyone to be knowledgeable and enlightened.

“That’s why we have public schools – so that an educated citizenry will lead to a good government.

“Our founders didn’t want a system of private schools each teaching students various things about the world coloring their minds with religious dogma. They didn’t want a system of schools run like businesses that were only concerned with pumping out students to be good cogs in the machinery of the marketplace.

“No. They wanted one public system created for the good of all, paid for at public expense, and democratically governed by the taxpayers, themselves.

“Don’t believe me?

“Just look at what the founders, themselves, had to say about it.

“More than any other fathers of the Revolution, Thomas Jefferson preached the Gospel of education and its necessity for free governance.

“As he wrote in a letter to Dr. Price (1789), “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“He expanded on it in a letter to C. Yancy (1816), “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“James Madison agreed. As the author of the Second Amendment, he is often credited with giving gun rights primary importance. However, he clearly thought education similarly indispensable. In a letter to W. T. Barry (1822), he wrote:

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

Here is my favorite quote, which captures precisely what the Founders dreamed:

John Adams wrote:

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”

Please open the post and read the links.

Categories Supporting public schools

Bob Braun: Do Public School Advocates Have the Will to Save Their Schools?

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2017 //
15

Bob Braun was a star investigative reporter in New Jersey. Now he is retire and blogs about the misdeeds and antics and corruption in his state. He is deeply knowledgeable about education.

In this post, he wonders whether the allies of public education have the guts and the will to save their public schools from predators.

Here he reports on a conference of public school advocates in New Jersey and warns against collaborating with those who want to destroy what you value. You cannot find common ground with vandals.

He writes:

“It’s not as if the problems aren’t known. Bruce Baker, the Rutgers professor who is probably the smartest and most cutting critic of state educational policy, warned both about the regressive nature of school funding under Christie–and the growing acceptance of the segregating effects of charter schools, privately-operated, public-funded schools that help frightened parents run away from public schools.

“We’ve lost momentum on the idea that pubic schools should be inclusive,” he said. “They”–the critics of public schools–“are making the opposite argument and they are winning.”

In short, the fundamental idea that public schools are and should be engines of equality and diversity is losing support.

And how will it be restored? Baker and others–including Theresa Luhm of the Education Law Center (ELC)–were not hopeful. No, it’s not that they were pessimistic–they were all hopeful the last eight years of Christie’s contempt for public education could be reversed. But they also warned that any effort to rewrite school funding laws were inherently dangerous because they invited political interference in the pursuit of true equity. Better to leave well enough alone and tinker with the edges.

Like Phil Murphy’s expected candidacy, this is simply not enough. Something akin to a political tsunami has occurred that is about to wash away public education as we know it and something more than the restoration of the Bourbons to public education is needed.

Participants in the conference danced around the danger of charters–but they are starving public schools. Yet even charter critics like Mark Weber–better known as the blogger Jersey Jazzman–offered palliatives when, in fact, bulldozers are needed. Charters suspend and expel 20 to 30 times more students than do public schools, a good way of enhancing their student test results, and such behavior raises serious moral as well as political issues.

Charters are cancers. There are no good cancers–and charter schools are metastasizing throughout education.

Mary Bennett, a former Newark high school principal, spoke about governance–specifically the return of local control to the Newark schools. But she neglected to mention that the path to local control was impeded, not by the will of the Newark people willing to fight for their schools, but by the unfortunate deal cut between Christie and Mayor Ras Baraka to end criticism of Christie’s policies in the city, including the vast expansion–doubling in ten years–of charter school enrollment.

Baraka, in short, impeded the pace of a return to local control and now takes credit for expediting it. The dangers public schools face now cannot allow such delusional political thinking–the enemies in Washington are too real and too powerful.

In the audience, Newark activist Roberto Cabanas pointed out the obvious: If the people of Newark just waited out Christie’s term, local control would be returned in 2018 when he leaves–even if Baraka had lost to pro-charter Shavar Jeffries in the 2014 mayoral contest. All the marches and rallies and speeches were pretty much useless.

“We could have done nothing and achieved the same result,” he said.

Don’t forget these were the activists, the advocates, the good guys, at the conference. But they argued against tinkering with the school aid formula, wrung their hands about seeking an end to charter schools completely, held out little hope about seriously integrating the public schools of the state, and believed that a mayor who hires school board members really means it when he talks about independent public education.

Even if Phil Murphy is elected, public education in New Jersey–and throughout the nation–is in serious trouble.

It is underfunded.

It is racially segregated.

It is in danger of being swept away by charters.

Its employees are demoralized.

It has been targeted for destruction by a national administration unlike any other in the history of the republic.

In short, without aggressive action to restore the promise of public education, it will continue to lose support among those who will turn to nuts like Trump and DeVos to find answers in alternatives like vouchers, private schooling, and home-schooling.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Home Schooling, Privatization, Resistance, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

UTLA Writes a Letter to Eli Broad about Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2017 //
12

The United Teachers of Los Angeles sent this letter to billionaire Eli Broad. Broad has been a major funder of privately managed charter schools in Los Angeles, Detroit, and other districts around the nation. He currently is promoting a $450 million plan to put half of all students in Los Angeles in charter schools. He also donates large sums to candidates who advocate the replacement of public schools with charter schools.

A few days before the vote to confirm Betsy DeVos, Broad announced that he opposed her.

UTLA wrote to Eli Broad:

Dear Mr. Broad:

UTLA and public education advocates, parents, students and community members have been fighting against Betsy DeVos’ nomination as Secretary of Education months before your letter, dated Feb. 1, was sent to all US Senators, in which you asked them to vote against her confirmation, which just took place today.

You were late to that struggle. We are not surprised.

If you are, according to your letter, “a believer in high-quality public schools and strong accountability for ALL public schools, including traditional and charter,” then you can do something right now: Immediately withdraw your financial support for the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

CCSA is a lobbying arm of the charter school industry that has amassed more than $170 million to fight the very existence of our neighborhood public schools.

Instead of continuing to fund CCSA, you should take responsibility for the damage you have caused, through your funding, to the school systems in California, Detroit, and New Orleans. In the latter two places, you worked hand-in-hand with Betsy DeVos.

To repair the damage, send your generous donations with no strings attached to the democratically elected school boards in California, especially the Los Angeles School Board, as well as schools in New Orleans and Detroit. School boards and school communities will invest this money appropriately.

In your letter, you say you “have never met Mrs. DeVos” and you have “serious concerns about her support of unregulated charter schools and vouchers as well as the potential conflicts of interests she might bring to the job.”

Forgive us as we take a moment to put this statement in context.

Last year, as one of the largest donors to CCSA, you helped thwart common-sense legislation like SB 322, which would have protected charter school students from unfair expulsions. You, through donations to CCSA, also intensely lobbied against AB 709, an accountability and transparency bill, which would have required that charter schools comply with the same state laws governing open meetings, open records and conflict of interest that traditional public schools do.

You and DeVos teamed up to fund legislative races in Louisiana, a state that, post-Hurricane Katrina, became the poster child for unregulated charter growth and the systematic destruction of the civic institution of public education.

Since 2008, you gave $212,500 to DeVos’ lobbying organization founded and chaired by her called “Alliance for School Choice.” It is a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm that, similar to CCSA, undermines public education and pushes for expansion of unregulated charter schools and school vouchers.

You and DeVos both funded the Educational Achievement Authority in Michigan, which oversaw the mass charter-ization and de-unionization of Detroit public schools, resulting in a wasteland rife with student equity and access violations, recently documented in a front page story in the New York Times.

While you claim to have never met her before, you have worked with her on multiple fronts, in multiple cities.

In 2016, with a donation of $2 million to CCSA Advocates, you were the most generous among California’s
elite handful of billionaires, including the Walton family of Walmart, Reed Hastings of Netflix and Doris Fisher of Gap, Inc. Your friend and former Los Angeles mayor Richard J. Riordan donated $50,000 to CCSA. He has also given
$1 million in the school board district race against School Board President Steve Zimmer.

You have so much money, maybe there is confusion around what legislation and which candidates your
vast wealth is actually fighting or supporting.

Because of your torrential financial support, last year CCSA far surpassed all other funders in state political races, including groups backed by the energy industry and real estate developers.

You and members of your billionaire club gave more than $27 million to various PACs like the Parent Teacher Alliance (PTA), the title of which is sneaky and confusing to parents. PTA has amassed $8 million this year alone. EdVoice amassed another $9 million. You gave more than $1.5 million to both of these PACs.

These independent expenditures help fund groups like Speak UP, Parent Revolution and Great Public Schools Now, as well as countless CCSA-backed candidates, who then work to undermine public education on your behalf.

When DeVos was first nominated, on Nov. 23, CCSA released a statement with high praise for Trump’s pick, and even said “Mrs. DeVos has long demonstrated a commitment to providing families with improved public school options and we look forward to working with the administration on proposals allowing all students in California to access their right to a high quality public education.”

CCSA and Great Public Schools Now have since backed off their enthusiastic support for DeVos,sensing it would be unpopular. We hope you have a deeper reason behind sending out your letter to the Senate, and that it will signal a shift in your financial support.

In your letter, you say DeVos is “unprepared and unqualified for the position.” You further say that we must have someone “who believes in public education and the need to keep public schools public.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Our public schools are in great need, many of them suffering from the years of unrelenting attacks from people like you.

Make amends. Join parents, students, educators and community members in our fight to save public education.

Immediately suspend your financial support of CCSA. Give your generous donations with no strings attached to public schools in California, Detroit, and New Orleans, and leave the educational decisions to our elected school boards and local stakeholders, who — unlike billionaires — are truly accountable to our communities.

Sincerely,

UTLA President
Alex Caputo-Pearl

Cc:
United States
Senators

—
Anna Bakalis

UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (c)
(213) 368-6247 (o)
Abakalis@UTLA.net
http://www.UTLA.net

Categories Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, Supporting public schools

Donna Roof: Today, Tomorrow, and Every Day

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2017 //
28

Donna Roof is a retired high school teacher in Indiana:

Today, I am heartsick and outraged…I saw 50 Senators and our Vice-President vote for a person who is highly unqualified to be our country’s Secretary of Public Education.

Today, I am heartsick and outraged…I witnessed how politicians have loyalty to their corporate donors rather than the common good.

Today, I am heartsick and outraged…I hear yet again the myth of failing public schools.

Today, I am heartsick and outraged…I fear what will happen to the neighborhood public schools who welcome all children.

Today, I am heartsick and outraged…I find offensive the assault on the teaching profession.
But yet…

Today, I am hopeful…I saw 50 Senators who pushed back in committee and testified for 24 hours for public education.

Today, I am hopeful…I stand in solidarity with public education supporters–teachers, parents, students, concerned citizens–who voiced their outrage via emails, tweets, phone calls, and rallies.

Today, I am hopeful…I now observe even more people uniting to save their public schools.

Today, I am hopeful…I believe in the teaching profession which has all children as its main focus.

Today, I am hopeful…I trust in Margaret Mead’s wisdom: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

And so…

Today, tomorrow, and every day…I will join with advocates across the country to save public education.

Today, tomorrow, and every day…I promise to Speak Up! and Speak Out! and be but one, yet mighty, voice for public education.

Today, tomorrow, and every day…I will encourage those who support public education to keep fighting the good fight and never lose sight of its goodness.

Today, tomorrow, and every day…I will continue to value public education as the great foundation of our country, for without it, all else is for naught.

Today, tomorrow, and every day…I will fight against the injustice being brought against public education as I heed the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Supporting public schools

North Carolina: Public School Advocates Start Campaign to “Buy” Senator Burr’s Vote

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2017 //
5

Following on the great success of the campaign to “buy” Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey’s vote (it raised $60,000 in three days, which will be donated to charities for children in the state), a similar GoFundMe campaign has been launched in North Carolina.

It is a great consciousness-raising activity. The funds will go to an organization that supports public schools.

“Durham, N.C., February 3, 2017: When North Carolina residents Eunice Chang and Lekha Shupeck realized the only way to get Senator Richard Burr’s attention was to buy it, they launched a GoFundMe campaign to do exactly that: http://www.gofundme.com/buy-senator-richard-burrs-vote.

“Betsy DeVos gave $43,200 to Senator Richard Burr’s reelection campaign, and is getting Burr’s vote for a Cabinet seat in return. Meanwhile, as many North Carolina citizens know first-hand, Burr consistently fails to answer constituent concerns.

“He refuses to hold town hall meetings because they “don’t work for him.” It’s near impossible to get in touch with staffers in his offices: phones are “busy,” voicemail boxes are full, and emails and letters are largely ignored. Burr’s office has called his own constituents, trying desperately to get their senator’s attention, “out-of-state[rs]” and “lack[ing] civility and decorum” simply for voicing their opposition to his policy decisions. In the case of the phone campaign against DeVos’ nomination, Burr himself stated that the opposition was a “strategy hatched a long time ago” rather than a genuine outpouring of concern from North Carolina citizens.

“Clearly, that $43,200 means that DeVos gets Senator Burr’s attention and vote, while the citizens of North Carolina get dismissed and ignored by the person who is supposed to represent their interests. So if money is the only thing Senator Burr listens to, we want to put our money to work!

“Since we believe that what DeVos did by donating to Burr’s campaign was tantamount to bribery and unethical, we won’t be trying to buy his vote directly. Instead, our fundraiser donates directly to Public School Forum of North Carolina, an organization that does important work advocating for better public education in our state’s schools.”

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/02/03/two-north-carolina-residents-launch-gofundme-campaign-buy-senator-burrs-vote/#sthash.4FkPgxJ9.hwwqaVYD.dpuf

Categories Betsy DeVos, North Carolina, Supporting public schools

Great News from Oklahoma! Pastors Are Organizing to Support Kids and Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2017 //
13

As the forces of reaction gather for an assault on public education in Oklahoma, pastors across the state have joined in an organization called Pastors for Oklahoma Kids. They have an alliance with the dynamic Pastors for Texas Children, which anticipates growing its membership in other states. They believe in public schools and in the historic separation of church and state.

Here is an excerpt from their organizing statement:

Oklahoma Pastors band together to advocate for kids

Oklahoma City, OK: With a new legislative session looming and multiple bills being introduced which threaten the free education of every child, a group of pastors gathered in Oklahoma City recently to form a new grassroots organization: Pastors for Oklahoma Kids.

Pastors for Oklahoma Kids plans to work with other like minded organizations as they form a broad coalition of clergy from across the state of Oklahoma that advocate for local schools, principals, teachers, staff and schoolchildren by supporting our free, public education system, promoting social justice for all children, and advancing legislation that enriches Oklahoma children, families, and communities.

Pastors for Oklahoma Kids has identified three main core values:

WE ARE FOR OKLAHOMA KIDS: 93% of Oklahoma Kids attend Public School. We want to re-shape conversation about Public Education in Oklahoma. We do not believe our schools are failing – that’s a cop out. Therefore we will challenge all who demean, belittle and undermine public education. We believe education is a moral good and obligation of the state to every child.

WE ARE FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS: We will advocate for adequately funded schools and paying teachers and school staff the wages they deserve. Because of this we are opposed to ESAs/Vouchers or any other name that inevitably leads to the privatization of Public Schools. We further believe in the wall of separation of church and state and that no public money should be used for religious schools.

WE ARE FOR TEACHERS: We refute the notion that schools are failing. We have failed if we resort to punishing good and godly teachers and administrators by demonizing their calling. We will send a clear message – we are WITH you. You do not stand alone. We join a growing network of clergy in other states advocating for public education, including our neighbors in Pastors for Texas Children.

For more information on Pastors for Oklahoma Kids or to read their Declaration on Public Education please visit: http://www.pastorsforoklahomakids.com

###

Categories Oklahoma, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools

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

Network for Public Education Vows to Carry Fight Against DeVos to Senate Floor!

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2017 //
23

The Network for Public Educations vows to carry the fight for a qualified Secretary of Education to the Senate floor.

We now have more than 300,000 members, located in every state.

We will fight for a Secretary of Education who will uphold the laws, support the right to an education for all children, and strengthen our public schools.

http://networkforpubliceducation.org/2017/01/devos-nomination-moves-senate-npes-300000-will-continue-fight/

NPE just released this statement:

Although disappointed by the decision of the HELP committee to send the vote on Betsy DeVos to the Senate floor, The Network for Public Education (NPE) was pleased by the strong opposition to DeVos. All Democrats voted against DeVos. Senators Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska while voting to move her nomination forward, would not commit to voting for her when the vote comes to the full Senate.

“Betsy DeVos put a spotlight on the threat to public education that charters-both online and brick and mortar, and private voucher schools pose to our democratically governed, community public schools. Public school advocates across the nation spoke out. Our campaign against DeVos generated over 600,000 emails and thousands of phone calls and letters to the Senate. Most Americans do not want an unregulated, privatized school system paid for by American taxpayers. That is what DeVos represents,” said NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris.

NPE President, Diane Ravitch, believes the massive political donations by DeVos was the driving factor behind her appointment. “We are disappointed but not surprised that Betsy DeVos was approved by the Senate HELP committee, despite the fact that she is completely unqualified for the job by experience or knowledge or any other criteria. As she has acknowledged, she and her family have given millions of dollars to the Republican party, including to members of the committee that just approved her. We weep for the children of America, knowing that this woman will launch an assault on their community public schools, as she did in Michigan. Since her choice theology was implemented in Michigan, that state’s rankings on national tests have plummeted, and Detroit–now flooded with charters–remains the lowest performing urban district on national tests. We will continue to fight this nomination as it moves forward.“

NPE Executive Board member, Phyllis Bush, lives in Indiana, a state the embraces the DeVos philosophy. “While the members of the HELP committee can talk about the importance of using a business model to reform public schools, the ultimate cost to Indiana is landing on the backs of students. Privatization reform has resulted in larger class sizes, tests that provide little useful information, school letter grades that reward zip codes, the elimination of essential services in public schools, and a critical teacher shortage.”

The Network for Public Education intends to mobilize its over 300,000 supporting members to continue the fight against DeVos’ appointment.

“When it comes to our fight for adequately funded, democratically-governed public schools, we make ‘no excuses’.” Our neighborhood schools made our country great. We will not allow them to be destroyed,” Burris said.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Supporting public schools, U.S. Department of Education
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