Archives for category: Vouchers
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Politico: Voters Consistently Turn Down Vouchers But Legislatures Can Be Bought

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2016 //
5

Politico reports on vouchers this morning. Vouchers have never won a popular vote. Public opinion polls are mixed, but the response depends on how the question is worded. DeVos and her allies have found her way around the problem: go to the legislature and give strategically to key legislators. In other words, buy their support. It works.

 

VOUCHERS HAVE BEEN A TOUGH SELL – AT LEAST WHEN PUT TO A VOTE: President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to create a massive $20 billion block grant to expand charter and private school options for poor children. But when voters in states across the country have been asked if they want to send public money to private schools through vouchers, they’ve pretty much always said no, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. Since 1978, voters in California, Colorado, Michigan, Oregon, Utah and Washington all rejected measures to enact private school choice programs. And the ballot referendums lost big – none of them drew support from more than 38 percent of voters. Voters in Florida and Oklahoma, in 2012 and 2016, shot down efforts to repeal so-called Blaine Amendments – which prohibit states from spending public money on religious schools and can limit a state’s ability to fund private school choice programs. [ED. NOTE: VOTERS HAVE NEVER APPROVED A REFERENDUM TO PERMIT PUBLIC MONEY TO BE SPENT IN NONPUBLIC OR RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS. THE DEVOS FAMILY SPONSORED A VOUCHER VOTE IN MICHIGAN IN 2000, AND IT WAS DEFEATED 69-31%.]

 

– Public polling, however, has been mixed on vouchers, with support levels ranging from 40 percent to 60 percent, said Josh Cunningham, a senior education policy specialist at the National Council of State Legislatures. “It’s probably fair to say that much of the public does not fully understand what school vouchers are,” Cunningham told Morning Education. “If anything, this history shows that going through the legislature may be an easier road towards adopting school choice policies than using the ballot.” Thanks to state lawmakers, there are 17 states (as well as D.C.) that have voucher programs, according to the council.

 

– The legislature is the route that Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, has taken repeatedly over the years. DeVos, through her groups, including the American Federation for Children and All Children Matter, has pushed voucher measures – successfully – through statehouses across the country, including in Indiana in 2011. DeVos told the Philanthropy Roundtable last year that “successful advocacy requires coordinating a lot of moving parts: identifying potential legislators, educating them about the issue, getting them elected, helping them craft and pass legislation, and helping with implementation once laws are passed to ensure that programs work for children.” Showering lawmakers with money also helps – and DeVos’ groups have spent millions on candidates who support vouchers. DeVos has been blunt about the power that donations have in politics. In 1997, she wrote in Roll Call that “I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return.”

Categories School Choice, Vouchers

Julie Vassilatos: Betsy DeVos and the Zombie Apocalypse

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2016 //
9

Julie Vassilatos, an activist parent of children in the Chicago public schools, writes here about Betsy DeVos.

She begins by offering a round up of some of the best posts about DeVos. We all must get up to speed on who she is.

In addition to being a fervent advocate for vouchers and charters, she has given generously to anti-gay organizations and organizations that promote creationism. I am trying to imagine what the U.S. Department of Education will do under her leadership backwards.

Julie points out that Arne Duncan paved the way for DeVos. Duncan and his Department made school choice a priority, leaving an opening for the next step, which is vouchers.

She would not have been able to accomplish what she did in Michigan without the federal government’s encouragement of privatization efforts for the past 8 years. She would not now be poised to bring full privatization to the nation if the field had not been tilled for this for the past 8 years. Duncan’s Department of Ed absolutely created the conditions for Betsy DeVos. She may be different in emphasis, but not in kind from Arne Duncan. She touts charters, choice, and competition; Duncan’s Department of Ed touted charters, choice, and competition. She likes vouchers; the Department of Ed never definitively closed the door on vouchers. She has given millions to unregulated charters; so did the Department of Ed. Federal visa policy and the New Market Tax Credit created the conditions to make charters very big–global–business.

All that was settled years ago. Now corporate ed control is poised to succeed in a totalizing way; all that was needed was a billionaire secretary of education who knows absolutely nothing about public education, is purely ideology-driven, and is well-practiced at controlling legislators with her cash.

Don’t fool yourselves–DeVos isn’t the sudden end of the world for public education, like a bomb being dropped. She’s more like the result of a slow-traveling virus or a zombie invasion. Our schools have been in peril for years. Now I think we will be able to see it more clearly. It’s time to get to work.

You can start here, by signing your name to the Network for Public Education’s letter to legislators insisting they not confirm her.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Peter Greene: What if We Let All Children Have Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2016 //
10

Peter Greene wrote this column a year ago, but it remains pertinent as ever.

Reformers like to say that the student should have “a backpack full of cash” (there is a terrific new documentary with that title, exposing the harm that school choice does to children and public schools).

Peter takes that canard on:

One of the foundational assertions of the charter movement is that public school tax dollars, once collected, should be attached to the child, maybe in a backpack, or perhaps surgically. “This public money… belongs to the student, not the failing school” wrote a commenter on one of my HuffPost pieces today. And I’ve heard variations on that over and over from charter advocates.

The money belongs to the student.

I’ve resisted this notion for a long time. The money, I liked to say, belongs to the taxpayers, who have used it to create a school system that serves the entire community by filling that community with well-educated adults who make better employees, customers, voters, neighbors, parents, and citizens. But hey– maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe that money, once collected really does belong to the student. In which case, let’s really do this.

Let’s let the student spend his voucher money (and let’s stop pussyfooting around this– when we talk about the money following the students, we’re talking about vouchers) on the education of his dreams.

Does she want to go to the shiny new charter school? Let her go (as long as they’ll take her, of course). But why stop there? Travel has long been considered a broadening experience– what if she wants to take the voucher and spend it on a world cruise? Why not? It’s her money. Perhaps she wants to become a champion basketball player– would her time not be well spent hiring a coach and shooting hoops all day? Maybe she would like to develop her skills playing PS4 games, pursuant to a career in video-game tournaments. That’s educational. In fact, as I recall the misspent youth of many of my cohort, I seem to recall that many found smoking weed and contemplating the universe to be highly educational. I bet a voucher would buy a lot of weed….

Heck, let’s really go all in. Why use the odd fiction of a voucher at all– let’s just collect taxes and cut every single student an annual check for $10,000 (or whatever the going rate is in your neighborhood). Let’s just hand them the money that we’re asserting belongs to them, and let them spend it as they wish. Maybe they’d like a nice couch, or a new iPad, or a sweet skateboard, or a giant voucher party, or food and clothing for themselves and their family.

He goes on from there. Read it and learn why that backpack full of cash is a dopey idea.

Categories Funding, Students, Vouchers

Republican Dominance of States Put Public Education at Risk in New Era

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2016 //
23

The Education Commission of the States posted a lineup of the partisan divide among the states. Republicans have a commanding lead over Democrats.

Of 50 states, 33 have Republican governors. Republicans control 66 partisan chambers, compared to 30 held by Democrats.

Republicans pick up three legislative chambers. The Kentucky House, Iowa Senate and Minnesota Senate switched from Democratic to Republican control. Republicans made history in Kentucky when they took 17 seats from the Democrats to gain control of the chamber for the first time since 1922, and only the third time in state history. Republicans now control all 30 legislative chambers in southern states.

Democrats pick up four legislative chambers. The New Mexico House, both Nevada Assembly and Senate and Washington Senate switched from Republican to Democratic control.

Tied chamber. Republicans also made gains in Connecticut, a reliably blue state, where the Senate is tied 18R-18D.
Three states with split/tied chambers. Colorado and Maine continue to have spit legislative chamber party control. This down from seven states pre-election (Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Washington). The Connecticut Senate is tied with 18 Republicans and 18 Democrats.

This means that a large number of states will look favorably on school choice, which Trump has described as his highest priority. Many states already have some form of voucher program; most–thanks to Race to the Top–permit charters. School choice–charters and vouchers–means less money for public schools. As public schools lose funding, class sizes will grow, programs will be cut, and alternatives will become more attractive.

If Betsy DeVos is confirmed as Secretary of Education, be prepared for an all-out federal assault on public schools. The same could be said of almost anyone Trump might select in her place (Falwell, Rhee, Moskowitz, etc.) The model is Race to the Top. The Department of Education might bundle $20 billion and dangle it before states as a competition, with eligibility dependent on laws permitting vouchers to religious schools and for-profit charters, even home schooling.

Friends and allies of public education, a cornerstone of our democracy for nearly 200 years, will have to organize and resist.

Join the Network for Public Education as we fight to defend public schools against privatization. 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Resistance, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

John Thompson on the Reformers’ Dilemma: To Trump or Not to Trump

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2016 //
17

For the past eight years, we collectively have had to figure out how to cope with lovers of privatization who claimed that they were reformers. They wanted to “save poor kids from failing schools” by opening privately managed charters that were all too often academically weak and financially unaccountable. They liked to fire the entire staff of struggling schools and hail their courage for daring to disrupt the lives of students and teachers. They praised high-stakes testing as part of their civil rights activism. They loved first-year teacher far more than those who made teaching a career. They also claimed that their disruption was done in the name of civil rights, and that they were progressives.

But now they have a problem. Trump has adopted their agenda of replacing public schools with charter schools. Shall they show Trump some reformer love or shall they express revulsion for his bigotry? Or both?

Historian and teacher John Thompson reviews the reformers’ dilemma:

The press release for Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) on the appointment of Amway heiress, Betsy DeVos, as Secretary of Education illustrates the moral and practical dilemmas faced by corporate school reform in the wake of the Trump election. DFER “applaud(s) Mrs. DeVos’s commitment to growing the number of high-quality public charter schools.” However, DFER claims to be “deeply concerned by much of the President-elect’s education agenda, which proposes to cut money from Title I and to eliminate the federal role on accountability.”
DFER Statement on President-elect Trump’s Nomination of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education – Democrats for Education Reform

Notably absent is a condemnation of DeVos’s devotion to vouchers, for-profit, private charters, and accountability-free virtual schools. Neither does DFER mention that 80% of the charters in her state of Michigan are for-profit.

DFER also protests that “our children are threatened by many of the President-elect’s proposals, such as kicking 20 million families off of healthcare, deporting millions of Dreamers, and accelerating stop-and-frisk practices.” It criticizes “Trump’s bigoted and offensive rhetoric [which] has assaulted our racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, causing millions of American children to perceive that they are less than full members of our communities.” The corporate reform think tank gives little indication, however, as to how much it will cooperate with DeVos’s rightwing agenda and the bigotry of Trumpism.

The reformers’ dilemma is not new, but now there is a new urgency to their need to look at themselves in the mirror. DFER isn’t likely to ask whether years of reformers’ attacks on loyal Democrats made a difference in Trump carrying Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Neither are they likely to question their faith in data-driven accountability even if they reckon with the finding that DeVos’s American Federation for Children reported to the Wisconsin elections board it spent only $345,000 on state legislative races in 2012. It bragged in another document that it spent $2.4 million in helping elect nine pro-privatization legislators.

But, what will happen if reformers cooperate with the “co-founder and current chair of the boards at the anti-teachers-union state advocacy groups Alliance for School Choice and American Federation for Children (AFC) and a close friend of teachers union opponent Campbell Brown?”

Oh, yeah, DFER and other reformers have already teamed with Campbell Brown, The 74, and an alphabet soup of hedge fund entrepreneurs in their legal assault on the due process rights of teachers. They have also collaborated with others, such as Michelle Rhee and Eva Moskowitz, who promise to work with Trump. But, what happens if reformers go along with for-profit charters and online schools in order to advance their scaling up of “public school charters,” and Trump’s overreach in domestic and foreign policies is so extreme that it brings their new allies and agenda down?

Or worse, what if they help Trump and his racist, sexist, and xenophobic policies are implemented?

Corporate reformers haven’t been shy about their funding from the Gates and Broad foundations, which is worrisome enough. One would think that they would have at least been squeamish about support from the Walton, Arnold, Bradley, and DeVose families. They should consider a 2014 analysis of the DeVos family’s rightwing agenda which concluded that they “sit alongside the Kochs, the Bradleys, and the Coorses as founding families of the modern conservative movement.” Richard DeVos Sr. “was an early member and funder of the Council for National Policy, a secretive network of hardline conservative leaders founded by Left Behind author Tim LaHaye.” Betsy’s father was a founder of the conservative Christian, anti-choice Family Research Council. Her brother founded the infamous Blackwater private security company.

Amway heir Dick DeVos beat Big Labor in its own backyard. Next up: your state.

Disgraced Texas congressman Tom DeLay advanced their agenda under the informal name of the “Amway caucus.” Other DeVos allies include gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson, Texas investor Harold Simmons, Jim Boop, general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee,” who also was the chief architect behind the controversial 2010 Citizens United case” and, of course, Vice President-elect Mike Pence.

I’ve long tried to communicate with reformers. Despite their demonizing teachers, unions, education schools, school boards, and Democrats who see high-stakes testing and charters differently, many speak privately about the mixed feelings they felt when uniting with rightwing reformers. They did so, I’m often told, because they believed it was necessary for Democrats to prove their toughness by battling unions and other loyal party members. The Obama administration, for instance, supposedly adopted an ALEC-lite, Scott Walker-lite, and Betsy DeVos-lite education agenda in an effort to keep the far Right from completely destroying public schools. In doing so, they helped open the door to mass charterization, and electing a President with strong support from the Alt-Right.

Reformers must finally look in the mirror and contemplate the fact that they and their allies have common links to intertwined, mostly hidden, corporate funding networks that have choreographed an extremist, anti-government campaign. Media Matters explains about DeVos’s American Federation for Children (AFC):

AFC’s website also directs readers to visit websites for its “national allied organizations,” which include the State Policy Network of conservative think tanks (of which the Alliance for School Choice is listed as an associate member), the American Center for School Choice, the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Black Alliance for Educational Options, the Cato Institute, the Center for Education Reform, Education Next, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options (HCREO), the Institute for Justice, K12 Inc., National School Choice Week (NSCW), Stand for Children, StudentsFirst, and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The AFC website also lists “state allies,” many of which are also members of the State Policy Network.

Here Are The Corporations And Right-Wing Funders Backing The Education Reform Movement

DFER claims that it aims “to return the Democratic Party to its rightful place as a champion of children, first and foremost, in America’s public education systems.” To do so, however, it embraced the edu-politics of destruction. It used the Billionaires Boys Club’s money to help pioneer a new type of public relations spin that has culminated in what is now called “post-fact.” DFER shared a false “bad teacher,” pro-charter narrative throughout a web of like-minded think tanks and interest groups. Now it must decide how much it will collaborate with a President of the United States who might even owe his victory to the Russian propaganda machine, spreading its fake news across the digital social networks that reformers also used to share their intellectually dishonest soundbites.

And that brings us closer to the real danger which DeVos represents for schools, and the nation. She is not just a run-of-the-mill corporate school reformer who pushes reckless market-driven policies in order to bring disruptive innovation to public schools. Contrary to her otherwise universal commitment to “choice,” DeVos vigorously campaigns against women’s right to choose. She brings the same zealotry to the Right to Life movement as she does to the promotion of vouchers and for-profit education ventures, and her financing of so-called Right to Work union-basting.

For DFER to honestly claim that it is working with DeVos and Trump in order to help children, it would have to believe that privatized jails and prisons, privatized water systems, and expanded Blackwater’s mercenaries were scaled up for the benefit of nonviolent offenders, the citizens of Flint, Michigan, and Iraqi noncombatants (and the American soldiers who faced the retaliation sparked by Blackwater’s abuses.)

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Nikhil Goyal: Can Public Schools Survive Trump’s Billionaire Wrecking Crew?

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2016 //
45

Nikhil Goyal is a prodigy who wrote his first book when he was only a teenager in public high school. Happily, he uses his considerable skills as a researcher to analyze the Trump “billionaire wrecking crew” that is planning to tear down our nation’s public schools.

Donald Trump, a self-described billionaire, wants billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos to take over the Department of Education. These two ultra-rich people have never attended public schools. Nor have they sent their kids to them. Yet they will likely accelerate the bipartisan dismantling of public education as we know it.

Private foundations, billionaires and Wall Street hedge fund managers have funneled billions of dollars either directly into the education system or the political process to influence policy. These groups are often staunch advocates of pro-market policies such as charter schools and school vouchers, which allows parents to send their kids to private schools using public money. DeVos has been described as “the four-star general of the voucher movement”…

Over the past two decades, as members of the ultra-wealthy rightwing DeVos family, Betsy and her husband, Dick, have been discreetly using their immense fortune to underwrite many of the major local and state crusades to privatize public education.

They helped pass Michigan’s first charter school law, pushed a failed Michigan school voucher referendum, helped get hundreds of pro-voucher and charter candidates for public office elected, proliferated charters, weakened teachers unions by advocating for right-to-work legislation in Michigan and warded off a proposed Detroit charter oversight commission in a state where 80% are run for profit with minimal accountability.
There are several flaws with vouchers. Their logic is based on empowering the individual over the state, rather than making systemic changes to funding, curriculum, assessment and teaching to achieve a high-quality, humane and equitable public system for all. Vouchers also siphon funds away from a cash-starved public system.

What’s more, studies have shown that school choice experiments in Chile and Sweden exacerbated existing inequalities. If we are to improve educational outcomes for all children, decades of research show that we must address the miserable social and economic conditions that profoundly affect schools: poverty, homelessness, inadequate healthcare, unsafe drinking water, food insecurity and gun violence. Reformers such as DeVos are not keen on the state redistributing their wealth to cure those ills…

The problem with this is that many charters are deeply segregated, push out low-performing and misbehaving students, and have been accused of “financial fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement” totaling more than $200m in a single 12-month span. Moreover, the Obama administration preserved and expanded Washington DC’s private school voucher program, which was originally launched by former president George W Bush.

DeVos will find many allies across the aisle in Washington, from Senator Cory Booker (who served on the board of the Alliance for School Choice, of which she was chairman) to the Center for American Progress to Democrats for Education Reform. At least she is forthright about gutting public education, as she wrote in an editorial urging to abolish and replace Detroit’s public schools with a free-market system, whereas Democrats hide behind the guise of “civil rights” and “educational opportunity”.

Unfortunately, the Obama years sowed the seeds for DeVos to finish the task. Without well-organized resistance, it will happen.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Trump, Vouchers

Jeffries and Cunningham on “Choice”: THE LINK IS WORKING

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2016 //
36

Reformers have been trying to figure what to say about Trump and DeVos. It is embarrassing for people who call themselves “progressives” to acknowledge that their agenda of charters and choice has been embraced by the most rightwing president in the past century, if not all of American history. They want more charters, as Trump promises, but they have to distance themselves from a president who has been warmly embraced by the KKK and other neo-Nazi groups.

Shavar Jeffries of DFER and Peter Cunningham of Education Post (and former aide to Arne Duncan) try to wend their way through the political thicket in this article. THE LINK IS NOW WORKING. 

First, they list all the Democrats (like Rahm Emanuel and Andrew Cuomo) who support school choice. But they include Albert Shanker without admitting that after promoting the idea of charters in 1988, he denounced them as no different from vouchers in 1993, when he saw the business groups vying to run schools for profit. Documented in my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, pp. 127-128, revised edition).

Second, they give a nod to their friends in the unions, neglecting to mention that 93% of charters are non-union and are endorsed by all the Red State governors and right wing think tanks as a way to break unions.

Their biggest concern seems to be that DeVos might not adhere to the accountability regime established by George W. Bush. For them, high-stakes testing is a civil rights issue. Critics of high-stakes testing know that these tests measure family income and cause immeasurable harm to children who are poor, children with disabilities, and children who are English language learners. Just look at the Common Core scores in any state: most kids “failed” a test that was a grade level or two above their real grade. The highest failure rates were among the children with the greatest needs.

Accountability belongs at at the top. That’s where crucial decisions are made about resources and leadership. Yet the “reformers” still want to pin it on teachers and students.

As for “choice,” the results of 20+ years of vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland and Detroit, and of charters there and  in other cities should persuade everyone that neither vouchers nor charters address the needs of our children, especially those who are poorest. Their most damaging result is to drain resources from the public schools that enroll all children, making them less able to do their job.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, DFER, Education Industry, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Standardized Testing, Testing, Vouchers

Post-Election Report: Betsy DeVos’ Organization Counts Its Victories Over Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2016 //
75

I posted this previously with the wrong link. This is the correct link: http://www.federationforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AFC-2016-Election-Memo_Final.pdf

Betsy DeVos, billionaire and Trump nominee for U.S. Secretary of Education, is chairman of the board and chief funder of the American Federation for Children. 

The organization advocates for charters and vouchers. If you scan its activities and news releases, you won’t find any mention of public schools. On her website, they are the invisible dragon that the AFC wants to slay.

When the election was over, the staff compiled a list of the victories for school choice. School choice means schools choose; school choice means segregation. School choice means privatization. In DeVos’ world, school choice means autonomy without accountability. School choice means the death of public education.

Read the AFC memo here.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Vouchers

DeVos Fought to Keep Michigan Charters Unregulated and Unaccountable

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2016 //
22

The DeVos family has had an outsize influence in Michigan, by its charitable contributions and its political contributions.

After the Detroit Free Press published a scathing series of articles about the corrupt, unaccountable practices in charter schools in the state, the legislature was shamed into drafting a law that would provide oversight of the charter sector.

The DeVos family gave out $1.5 million in campaign contributions to make sure that charter schools continued to be unregulated and unaccountable.

80% of the charter schools in Michigan operate for profit. No other state has so many for-profit operators.

Detroit is overrun with charters. It is at the very bottom of all urban districts tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, despite all its choice and competition. Or because of them.

Michigan doesn’t have vouchers, because the people of Michigan voted them down in 2000 when the DeVos family proposed an initiative to permit public funds to flow to nonpublic schools. The measure lost overwhelmingly, by 69-31%. No county in the state voted for it.

Milwaukee has had both charters and vouchers for more than 20 years, and it is among the lowest scoring urban districts in the nation, but ahead of Detroit.

Read what the New York Times wrote about charters in Detroit last June. DeVos now owns this mess.

Why should anyone open a charter school, get public money, and be free of oversight? Why should taxpayer dollars flow to religious schools when every state referendum on vouchers has gone down to inglorious defeat by large majorities?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Michigan, Privatization, Vouchers

Paul Krugman: We Are in For Four Years of Corruption by Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2016 //
52

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, predicts an unprecedented level of corruption during the Trump years, related to Trump’s refusal to separate himself from his business empire. Will foreign diplomats reserve the $20,000 a night suite at the Trump hotel in D.C. to impress the President? Will governments grant permits expeditiously to build new Trump hotels, casinos and golf courses to curry favor? Will the President appoint members of the National Labor Relations Board to prevent his hotels from being unionized (there is a labor dispute at a Trump hotel in Las Vegas before the NLRB right now).

He writes,

Self-dealing will be the norm throughout this administration. America has just entered an era of unprecedented corruption at the top.

The question you need to ask is why this matters. Hint: It’s not the money, it’s the incentives.

True, we could be talking about a lot of money — think billions, not millions, to Mr. Trump alone (which is why his promise not to take his salary is a sick joke). But America is a very rich country, whose government spends more than $4 trillion a year, so even large-scale looting amounts to rounding error. What’s important is not the money that sticks to the fingers of the inner circle, but what they do to get that money, and the bad policy that results.

Normally, policy reflects some combination of practicality — what works? — and ideology — what fits my preconceptions? And our usual complaint is that ideology all too often overrules the evidence.

But now we’re going to see a third factor powerfully at work: What policies can officials, very much including the man at the top, personally monetize? And the effect will be disastrous.

Let’s start relatively small, with the choice of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Ms. DeVos has some obvious affinities with Mr. Trump: Her husband is an heir to the fortune created by Amway, a company that has been accused of being a fraudulent scheme and, in 2011, paid $150 million to settle a class-action suit. But what’s really striking is her signature issue, school vouchers, in which parents are given money rather than having their children receive a public education.

At this point there’s a lot of evidence on how well school vouchers actually work, and it’s basically damning. For example, Louisiana’s extensive voucher plan unambiguously reduced student achievement. But voucher advocates won’t take no for an answer. Part of this is ideology, but it’s also true that vouchers might eventually find their way to for-profit educational institutions.

And the track record of for-profit education is truly terrible; the Obama administration has been cracking down on the scams that infest the industry. But things will be different now: For-profit education stocks soared after the election. Two, three, many Trump Universities!

Moving on, I’ve already written about the Trump infrastructure plan, which for no obvious reason involves widespread privatization of public assets. No obvious reason, that is, except the huge opportunities for cronyism and profiteering that would be opened up.

Krugman previously wrote that Trump’s proposal to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure would privatize many of our public assets and become a goldmine for the private sector.

Buckle your seat belts. The next four years will make Teapot Dome look like a tea party.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Ethics, For-Profit, Fraud, Trump, Vouchers
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