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Archives for category: U.S. Department of Education
Here are two views of Mick Zais, the new Deputy Secretary of Education selected by Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump.
First, from Politico:
“TRUMP TAPS NEW NO. 2 FOR THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT: The president on Tuesday night announced he’s nominating Mick Zais to be deputy secretary at the Education Department. Zais checks off a lot of conservative boxes – as superintendent of schools in South Carolina, he refused to participate in the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top program, which encouraged states to adopt more rigorous academic standards like the Common Core in exchange for federal grants. Zais saw the standards, which were never mandated by the Obama administration, as federal overreach. He pulled South Carolina out of the Smarter Balanced tests, which are aligned to the Common Core. And he has supported the expansion of school choice programs in the state. Prior to serving as South Carolina’s superintendent, Zais was president of Newberry College for 10 years.”
The Council of Chief State School Officers expressed their approval.
But the grassroots group EdFirstSC were not so complimentary about their state school superintendent. They don’t think much of him.
“How about:
“Since taking office, Zais sent $144 million of our tax dollars to 49 other states, causing thousands of SC teachers to be fired and directly causing class sizes to skyrocket as we made the biggest cuts to education in the US…24.1%. SC test scores on NAEP plummeted over this period of draconian cuts that Zais would now make permanent.
“Since budgets have recovered, Zais has not requested that this funding be restored, even when the state had a billion-dollar surplus. To continue running SC schools on the cheap, he tried desperately to gut regulations limiting class-sizes.
“Zais has poisoned relationships with teachers, attempting to give them letter-grades based on test scores of students they’ve never even met. At a recent State Board meeting, he suggested making teachers at-will employees, to be fired without notice and without showing any cause or due process.
“Zais also took 29 personal days during his first ten months in office. He used those days to go golfing, attend stamp conventions, attend football games, and clean his shed.
“Zais allowed Jay Ragley to lie to the media, claiming that records related to those personal days would cost $500,000 in man-hours to process and provide under a Freedom of Information Act request. It ended up taking a staffer about two hours.
“His department has also conspired to censor and suppress public comment at a series of public meetings on teacher evaluation. At one meeting, staff members were caught taking audience questions into the hallway and stuffing them into a briefcase.
“At another, two senior staff members stood onstage giggling as they sorted questions into those that would and would not be answered. In a two-hour meeting, less than ten minutes were allotted for questions, and none were asked that raised concerns about their plan. That plan was ultimately rejected by the State Board because of serious concerns about its fairness.
“Even those who agree with his goals and radical Libertarian ideology would have to concede that Zais has been singularly ineffective in accomplishing anything of note.
“He runs the same play over and over: develop a plan with no input from stakeholders, keep the public in the dark, fail disastrously when it all comes to light…and then withdraw the plan to duck a vote.”
Usually, a new Secretary of Education selects a Deputy with extraordinary talents or a successful record.
DeVos seems to have chosen someone with more experience than she is (any educator fits that bill) but who is totally ineffectual and leads a low-performing state.
One thing she can count on: he shares her radical libertarian ideology.
Thanks to Leonie Haimson for assembling this information about the US ED plans to spread charter money.
US ED announces more funding for charter schools nationwide, including 5 NYC charters, & yet another $3.2M for Success which has received many millions already from the feds as well as from private sources.
and https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/
Charter apps and reviewer comments here: https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/charter-schools-program-grants-for-replications-and-expansion-of-high-quality-charter-schools/awards/
U.S. Department of Education Awards $253 Million in Grants to Expand Charter Schools
September 28, 2017
Contact: Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that The Expanding Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Program (Charter Schools Program or CSP) has awarded new grants this week to fund the creation and expansion of public charter schools across the nation, totaling approximately $253 million.
“These grants will help supplement state-based efforts to give students access to more options for their education,” said Secretary DeVos. “What started as a handful of schools in Minnesota has blossomed into nearly 7,000 charter schools across the country. Charter schools are now part of the fabric of American education, and I look forward to seeing how we can continue to work with states to help ensure more students can learn in an environment that works for them.”
The following grants slates were awarded:
The State Entities program awarded approximately $144.7 million in new grants to nine states.
The Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools program awarded approximately $52.4 million in new grants to 17 non-profit charter management organizations.
The Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities program awarded approximately $56.25 million in new grants to six non-profit organizations and two state agencies.
These grants are awarded to state educational agencies and other state entities, charter management organizations (CMOs) and other non-profit organizations and represent the first cohort of new awards under the program’s new authorizing statute, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Please see below for the list of grantees, first year grant amounts and total recommended funding (contingent on future Congressional appropriations).
State Entity Grantees:
Grantee Name FY 17 Funding (Year 1 and 2 Funding) Total Recommended Funding
Indiana Department of Education $24,002,291 $59,966,575
Maryland State Department of Education $5,490,859 $17,222,222
Minnesota Department of Education $22,381,611 $45,757,406
Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board* $4,240,819 $15,000,000
New Mexico Public Education Department $6,358,693 $22,507,805
Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, Inc.* $4,264,870 $16,499,722
Rhode Island Department of Education $1,953,000 $6,000,000
Texas Education Agency $38,034,535 $59,164,996
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction $37,954,114 $95,777,775
Total $144,680,792 $331,896,501
* Eligible applicants under this program are state entities. A state entity is defined under ESSA as a state educational agency; a state charter school board; a Governor of a state; or a charter school support organization.
CMO Grantees:
Grantee Name State** FY17 Funding Total Recommended Funding
Ascend Learning, Inc. NY $3,661,357 $9,484,885
Brooke Charter Schools MA $353,747 $836,136
Eagle Academy Public Charter School DC $449,066 $812,885
East Harlem Tutorial Program NY $542,640 $2,781,280
Environmental Charter Schools CA $566,063 $900,000
Family Life Academy Charter Schools, Inc. NY $739,260 $900,000
Fortune School of Education CA $1,350,600 $2,043,100
Freedom Preparatory Academy, Inc. TN $1,451,301 $4,297,000
Great Oaks Foundation, Inc. NY $1,958,400 $3,834,000
Hiawatha Academies MN $1,121,400 $1,875,000
IDEA Public Schools TX $26,316,168 $67,243,986
New Paradigm for Education, Inc MI $2,365,400 $5,084,100
Rocketship Education CA $5,090,134 $12,582,678
Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. NY $3,225,240 $6,130,200
The Freedom and Democracy Schools Foundation, Inc. MD $603,003 $1,533,528
University Prep Inc. CO $1,360,730 $3,734,750
Voices College-Bound Language Academies CA $1,258,415 $2,699,999
Total:
$52,412,924 $126,773,527
**State reflects where the organization is based; school expansion sites funded under this grant may differ.
Credit Enhancement Grantees:
Grantee Name State** FY17 and Total Project Funding
Building Hope…A Charter Schools Facilities Fund DC $8,000,000
California School Finance Authority CA $8,000,000
Center for Community Self-Help NC $8,000,000
Charter Schools Development Corporation MD $5,000,000
Hope Enterprise Corporation MS $8,000,000
Low Income Investment Fund CA $8,000,000
Massachusetts Development Finance Agency MA $8,000,000
Raza Development Fund AZ $3,250,000
Total
$56,250,000
**State reflects where the organization is based; school expansion sites funded under this grant may differ.
Additional information regarding these grant programs and awards, including copies of grantee applications, may be found at: https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/
I hope we won’t hear from any of the “progressives” who agree with DeVos about charters. She knows exactly what she is doing. Funding schools to compete with and undermine community public schools.
Politico reports that a key position at the U.S. Department of Education will go to one of the nation’s most outspoken opponents of public schools, Jim Blew. Blew has long experience at the charter-loving, union-hating Walton Family Foundation and served as president of Michelle Rhee’s public school-bashing Students First. The position he is slated to assume is the policymaking arm of the department. It is supposed to be a nonpartisan, expert role, judging the efficacy of Department initiatives. It might as well be abolished because we already know that school choice, charters, vouchers, union-bashing, and inexperienced teachers will be the policies of this administration.
“TRUMP TO NOMINATE JIM BLEW FOR ED SPOT: Jim Blew, director of the education advocacy group Student Success California, is Trump’s pick to become the Education Department’s assistant secretary of the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. POLITICO reported he was the frontrunner in July. The administration announced late Thursday that the president plans to formally nominate him for the role. The announcement touted Blew’s experience as the former president of Students First, a national advocacy organization founded by former D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. It also said that for more than a decade, he was a key adviser to the Walton family, serving as director of K-12 reform investments for the Walton Family Foundation.”
Education Week reports on decisions made by Senate and House committees that preserve programs targeted for deep cuts by the Trump administration and sharp rebuffs to Trump plans to expand school choice. However, the federal appropriation for charter schools was increased by $25 million, which is a big victory for DeVos and a rebuff to the NAACP.
Lawmakers overseeing education spending dealt a big blow to the Trump administration’s K-12 budget asks in a spending bill approved by a bipartisan vote Wednesday.
The legislation would leave intact the main federal programs aimed at teacher training and after-school funding. And it would seek to bar the U.S. Department of Education from moving forward with two school choice initiatives it pitched in its request for fiscal year 2018, which begins Oct. 1.
The bill, which was approved unanimously by the Senate budget subcommittee that oversees health, education and labor spending, would provide $2.05 billion for Title II, the federal program that’s used to hire and train educators. Both the House spending committee and the Trump administration have proposed scrapping the program, so it remains in jeopardy despite the Senate’s support.
The measure rejects another high-profile cut pitched by the Trump administration, $1.2 billion for the 21st Century Community Learning Center program, which helps school districts cover the cost of afters-chool and summer-learning programs. The House also refused to sign off on the Trump administration’s pitch to eliminate the program. Instead, it voted to provide $1 billion for 21st Century, meaning the program would almost certainly see some funding in the 2018-19 school year.
The panel also dealt a blow to the administration’s school choice ambitions. And the bill seeks to stop the Education Department from moving forward on a pair of school choice programs it proposed in its budget request. The administration had sought a $1 billion boost for the nearly $15 billion Title I program, the largest federal K-12 program, which is aimed at covering the cost of educating disadvantaged students. The Trump administration had wanted to use that increase to help districts create or expand public school choice programs. And it had hoped to use the Education Innovation and Research program to nurture private school choice.
The Senate bill essentially rejects both of those pitches. It instead would provide a $25 million boost for Title I, and $95 million for the research program, a slight cut from the current level of $100 million.
But importantly, the legislation wouldn’t give U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team the authority to use that money for school choice. In fact, the committee said in language accompanying the bill that the secretary of Education Betsy DeVos must get permission from Congress to create a school choice initiative with the funds.
A House appropriations panel also rejected the school choice initiatives in a budget bill approved earlier this year. Taken together, that’s a major setback for DeVos’ number one priority.
But the Senate bill does include a $25 million increase for charter school grants, which would bring them to $367 million. That’s not as high as the $167 million boost the administration asked for, or even as high as the $28 million the House is seeking.
Stephen Dyer writes here about the curious fact that Trump and DeVos have failed to appoint any assistant secretaries in the Department of Education. His post includes a list of the agencies that are currently leaderless.
There is no Deputy Secretary, there is no Undersecretary. DeVos has assembled a few aides, but none that require Senate confirmation.
Dyer says this gives her a free hand to do whatever she wants. Of course, as Secretary, she would have the same free hand to do whatever she wants even if all the assistant secretaries were in place.
But there may be another reason to leave positions at ED empty:
For years now Republicans have made the Department of Education their favorite bureaucratic elimination target.
Even Rick Perry remembered he wanted to eliminate the Department during his infamous “Oops” moment during the 2012 debate season.
It appears that Trump has decided to let the Department wither on the vine, consolidate the power in the hand of a single person who is historically under qualified for the position and (like his comments on Obamacare this week), just let the Department die.
While I have certainly disagreed with federal interference in education policy over the years, I believe there is a role for the Department to play, especially when it comes to funding. Many areas of the country fund their education systems less effectively than others. The federal government can help equalize that difference to a great degree so that all Americans, regardless of where they live can achieve the American Dream.
After eight years of micromanagement by Arne Duncan (7 years) and John King (1 year), states will not miss the heavy hand of the feds.
DeVos’s slipshod review of state ESSA plans shows that she is not about to give up her desire to use the federal role to bully states and districts. But she is uniquely unqualified to tell any public school system what it should be doing. And the ESSA law says she should keep her hands off.
Before someone else points it out, I will note that the State Department is also running without leadership below the level of the Secretary Rex Tillerson. Perhaps Trump wants to eliminate the State Department too. Is Trump engaging in what Steve Bannon called “the deconstruction of the administrative state”?
A group of Democratic Senators wrote a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to express their concern that she was abandoning civil rights enforcement.
DeVos wrote back to say that she was “returning” the Office for Civil Rights to its role as a “neutral” investigative agency.
It is at a time like this that DeVos’s ignorance of education policy and history becomes embarrassing. OCR is the Office FOR Civil Rights. It was never a “neutral” agency. It led the way in the 1960s in forcing the integration of Southern schools. It didn’t just investigate. It threatened Southern districts that did not produce hard data about students and faculty integration. No integration, no federal funding.
One can’t be “neutral” about civil rights. The Office for Civil Rights is meant to enforce the law and protect the vulnerable–not to feign indifference.
Can anyone spell “conflict of interest”? Has anyone at the Department of Education ever heard the term?
Betsy Devos just selected the CEO of a corporation collecting student loans to police the collection of student loans.
The strange thing is that the Education Department forgot to mention this interesting fact when his appointment was announced, and it was removed from his resume.
Whose side will he be on–the industry or the students?
When the Trump administration announced its pick to run the $1.3 trillion federal student loan system on Tuesday, there was one notable thing about the candidate that wasn’t mentioned in the press release: he’s the CEO of a private student loan company.
The Education Department’s statement described A. Wayne Johnson as the “Founder, Chairman and former CEO” of a payments technology company called First Performance Corporation. It noted his Ph.D. in education leadership, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, citing his dissertation, said he “actually wrote the book on student loan debt.”
But what wasn’t noted was Johnson is currently the CEO of Reunion Student Loan Services, a detail confirmed by a company representative reached by phone on Tuesday afternoon. Reunion originates and services private student loans, and offers refinancing and consolidation for existing loans.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I suppose this is another rebuke to the writer of the strange article in the New York Times who claimed that DeVos was making “surprising” appointments of people who are not as far right as she is. One alleged surprise was that she chose a gay woman to lead the Office of Civil Rights, which isn’t so surprising when you realize, that Candace Jackson may be gay but she opposes affirmative action and feminism, like DeVos and is content to see OCR reduce its civil rights activism. The other “surprise” choice was Jason Botell, who ran a KIPP charter school and advised Trump on education during the campaign. Why is running a charter school somehow a surprising choice for a charter zealot like DeVos. Now she has chosen an industry insider to police the industry. Is that also a surprise to the New York Times?
ProPublica had performed a public service by obtaining the financial disclosure forms of top appointments in the administration. Take a look at those who are special assistants to Secretary DeVos. Each form lists previous jos held outside the federal government.
Several worked in the Trump campaign. One came through a Koch brothers organization. Another worked for DeVos’ American Foundation for Children. One was a program officer at the Gates Foundation. Another was an Uber driver. Another has no previous employment history. One came from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
One thing jumps out: other than working in voucher advocacy organizations, none has any experience in education. Or at least none they don’t acknowledge it if they did.
None was a classroom teacher or administrator. None was a State Commissioner of Education. None is a University scholar.
Betsy DeVos is surrounded by low-level GOP campaign workers and ideological bedfellows. And a former Uber driver.
Jeff Bryant warns that Betsy DeVos’ new hires spell bad news for protection of civil rights by the U.S. Department of Education.
He writes:
“Already, much has been written about Candice Jackson, DeVos’s deputy assistant secretary and acting head in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights….
“An in-depth profile by ProPublica revealed her “limited background in civil rights law” and her previous writings in which she “denounced feminism and race-based preferences.”
“A recent piece in the New York Times tried to rehabilitate Jackson’s image, noting, “She is a sexual assault survivor, and has been married to her wife for more than a decade.”
“The fact that Candace Jackson is gay does not qualify her to enforce civil rights if she does not believe in enforcement of civil rights,” wrote education historian Diane Ravitch on her personal blog after reading the Times piece.
“A more recent hire for the department’s deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs is former Koch Foundation employee and director of the Individual Rights Defense Program Adam Kissel.
“According to Inside Higher Ed, Kissel has accused universities of “violating the free speech rights of students and faculty. He’s also criticized broader ‘intolerance’ on campuses” and “taken issue with the standard of proof used by colleges in the adjudication of recent sexual harassment and assault cases.”
“Kissel has been a high profile critic of the federal government’s enforcement of Title IX, the federal gender-equity law, and how it’s been applied to campus sexual violence. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Kissel has used op-eds and Twitter to declare, “American higher education is smothered in intolerance of diverse ideas,” a phrase often used to allow hate speech on college campuses.
“Another new DeVos hire with a problematic past related to discrimination is Kimberly Richey, who will serve as deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services.
“Richey was previously the state counsel for Oklahoma’s state superintendent of education Janet Barresi…A 2015 examination by Oklahoma Watch found, “Oklahoma ranked first in the nation in rates of special education students being expelled from schools. It ranked fourth in corporal punishment of such students, 19th in in-school suspensions, 28th in out-of-school suspensions and 20th in arrests.”
“According to state data, students with disabilities “were more likely than their peers to be suspended, expelled, arrested, handcuffed or paddled. In dozens of schools, special education students are anywhere from two to 10 times more likely to be disciplined, the data show. At some schools, every special education student has been physically disciplined, suspended or expelled.”
As the saying goes, personnel is policy.
