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Rebecca Mead: Betsy DeVos and the Plan to Break Public Education

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2016 //
24

Rebecca Mead, staff writer at The anew Yorker, outlines the advantages that Betsy DeVos offers:

 

She has no ties to Vladimir Putin; she hasn’t spread fake news; she apparently has no plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Of these three “advantages,” I feel confident only about the first one. Her persistent lambasting of public schools is fake news. And it remains to be seen whether she will close down the ED Department.

 

Of this we can be confident: she is the first Secretary of Education who is actively hostile to public education. She is an extremist ideologue. She is unfit to manage a large government agency that is responsible not only for aid to poor children in K-12 but for aid to higher education, student debt, aid to special education, education research, and a variety of other programs about which she is inexperienced and uninformed.

 

Mead writes:

 

“DeVos has never taught in a public school, nor administered one, nor sent her children to one. She is a graduate of Holland Christian High School, a private school in her home town of Holland, Michigan, which characterizes its mission thus: “to equip minds and nurture hearts to transform the world for Jesus Christ.”

 

How might DeVos seek to transform the educational landscape of the United States in her position at the head of a department that has a role in overseeing the schooling of more than fifty million American children? As it happens, she does have a long track record in the field. Since the early nineteen-nineties, she and her husband, Dick DeVos, have been very active in supporting the charter-school movement. They worked to pass Michigan’s first charter-school bill, in 1993, which opened the door in their state for public money to be funnelled to quasi-independent educational institutions, sometimes targeted toward specific demographic groups, which operate outside of the strictures that govern more traditional public schools. (Dick DeVos, a keen pilot, founded one of his own: the West Michigan Aviation Academy, located at Gerald Ford International Airport, which serves an overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male population of students.)”

 

DeVos has a long record of promoting choice, that is, seeking alternatives to public schools. She doesn’t like public schools. She believes in choice without accountability. As Mead points out, the dire situation in Detroit reflects her ideology. Detroit has been Her Petrilli dish. It is a colossal failure. Despite what is right before her, she still believes that choice is all that is needed to produce excellence. Except it doesn’t, never has, never will. In DeVos’s mind, ideology trumps all, evidence doesn’t matter. She thinks that public schools are passé, finished, so yesterday.

 

Mead writes:

 

“Missing in the ideological embrace of choice for choice’s sake is any suggestion of the public school as a public good—as a centering locus for a community and as a shared pillar of the commonweal, in which all citizens have an investment. If, in recent years, a principal focus of federal educational policy has been upon academic standards in public education—how to measure success, and what to do with the results—DeVos’s nomination suggests that in a Trump Administration the more fundamental premises that underlie our institutions of public education will be brought into question. In one interview, recently highlighted by Diane Ravitch on her blog, DeVos spoke in favor of “charter schools, online schools, virtual schools, blended learning, any combination thereof—and, frankly, any combination, or any kind of choice that hasn’t yet been thought of.” A preëmptive embrace of choices that haven’t yet been thought of might serve as an apt characterization of Trump’s entire, chaotic cabinet-selection process. But whether it is the approach that will best serve current and prospective American school students is another question entirely.”

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Will Philanthropy Change Direction in the Age of Trump?

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2016 //
7

Vu Le directs a nonprofit organization. He wrote a bold article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy advising philanthropists to change direction and pay more attention to small organizations that work directly with those in need and cut back on their demands for paperwork, data, and endless documentation.

The nonprofit world woke up last week to a surreal and terrifying new reality, one that must force us all to operate differently. To see our nation choosing walls, divisiveness, xenophobia, and demagoguery over love, hope, diversity, and community is devastating.

The people nonprofits serve felt the pain immediately. We have kids chanting “Build that wall” in school lunchrooms. We have women wearing hijabs being attacked. (Trump supporters have been assaulted as well.) I personally know Latino parents trying to answer their kids’ questions about when they will get deported. Many of my LGBTQ friends and colleagues are in despair.

We cannot just hope it will all be OK. The new presidency threatens to undo all the progress nonprofits have worked so hard to make: progress on climate change, gender equity, marriage equality, support for the poor and homeless, and the push for diversity and inclusion throughout society. Millions of people may lose their health insurance. Hundreds of thousands of Dreamers may be exiled.

As nonprofits work to oppose all the ways in which a Trump presidency threatens the people we serve, we need money and support — and that must come from a new social contract with foundations. Grant makers must end, once and for all, the destructive funding philosophies and practices that have hampered nonprofits’ ability to achieve success.

To face a future that is terrifying to many of us and the people we serve, foundations must think and fund differently.

One thing that most of us know about philanthropies is that they have almost completely abandoned public education. The big three–Gates, Broad, and Walton–are all in for privatization. They think that the public schools that enroll 94% of the children are hopeless. They don’t like public schools. They don’t like unions. They want public schools to operate like businesses. They want them to hire inexperienced and uncredentialed teachers. They micromanage their grants. They overemphasize test scores as the data that shows whether their grantees are successful. They have wrought immeasurable harm on our democratic public system.

After reading this article, I feel moved to write something for The Chronicle of Philanthropy. I don’t know if they will publish it, but it is worth a try.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

How the Billionaire Boys Club Paved the Way for Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2016 //
35

I wrote an article for the online version of the Chronicle of Philanthropy about how the big foundations paved the way for Betsy DeVos’ nihilistic campaign to privatize public education. I wanted it to be in a journal that foundations across the nation read. It is available only to subscribers.

 

 

https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Opinion-Blame-Big-Foundations/238662

 

Opinion: Blame Big Foundations for Assault on Public Education
By Diane Ravitch
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to reallocate $20 billion in federal funds to promote charter schools and private-school vouchers. He has selected Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos — who has long devoted her philanthropic efforts to advocating for charters and vouchers — as the next secretary of education. After the election, her American Federation for Children boasted of spending nearly $5 million on candidates that support school choice, not public schools.
Currently, 80 percent of charter schools in Michigan are run by for-profit corporations, due in no small part to Ms. DeVos and her husband, Amway heir Dick DeVos. These schools represent a $1 billion industry that produces results no better than do public schools, according to a yearlong Detroit Free Press investigation. The DeVoses recently made $1.45 million in campaign contributions to Michigan lawmakers who blocked measures to hold charters accountable for performance or financial stability.
With Ms. DeVos in charge of federal education policy, the very future of public education in the United States is at risk. How did we reach this sorry state? Why should a keystone democratic institution be in jeopardy?
I hold foundations responsible.
Extremist Attacks
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation have promoted charter schools and school choice for the past decade. They laid the groundwork for extremist attacks on public schools. They legitimized taxpayer subsidies for privately managed charters and for “school choice,” which paved the way for vouchers. (Indeed, as foundations spawned thousands of charter schools in the past decade, nearly half of the states endorsed voucher programs.)
At least a dozen more foundations have joined the Big Three, including the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund.
For years these groups have argued that, one, public schools are “failing”; two, we must save poor children from these failing schools; three, they are failing because of bad teachers; four, anyone with a few weeks of training can teach as well, or better. It’s a simple, easily digestible narrative, and it’s wrong.
To begin with, our public schools are not failing. Where test scores are low, there is high poverty and concentrated racial segregation. Test scores in affluent and middle-income communities are high. The U.S. rank on international standardized tests has been consistent (and consistently average) since those tests began being offered in the 1960s, but the countries with higher scores never surpassed us economically.
The big foundations refused to recognize the limitations of standardized testing and its correlation with family income. Look at SAT scores: Students whose families have high incomes do best; those from impoverished families have the lowest scores. The foundations choose to ignore the root causes of low test scores and instead blame the teachers at schools in high-poverty areas.
Follow the Money
Major foundations put their philanthropic millions into three strategies:
They funded independently run charter schools, which are a form of privatization.
Some, notably the Gates Foundation, invested in evaluating teachers based on their students’ test scores.
They gave many millions to Teach for America, which undermines the profession by leading young college graduates to think they can be good teachers with only five weeks of training.
Many of the philanthropists behind the foundations have also used their own money to underwrite political candidates and state referenda aimed at advancing charters and school choice. Bill Gates and his allies spent millions to pass a referendum in Washington State authorizing charter schools; it failed three times before winning in 2012 by 1 percent of the vote. After the state Supreme Court denied taxpayer funding to charters, on the grounds that they are not public schools because they are not overseen by elected school boards, three justices who joined the majority ruling faced electoral challengers bankrolled by Mr. Gates and his friends. (The incumbents easily won re-election.)
The Walton Family Foundation claims to have launched one-quarter of the charter schools in the District of Columbia. It has pledged to spend $200 million annually for at least the next five years on opening new charters. Individual family members have spent millions on pro-school choice candidates and ballot questions. This year they joined other out-of-state billionaires like Michael Bloomberg in contributing $26 million to support a Massachusetts referendum that would authorize a dozen new charters a year, indefinitely. It lost, 62 percent to 38 percent. Only 16 of the state’s 351 school districts voted “yes”; the “no vote” was strongest in districts that already had charters, which parents knew were draining resources from their public schools.
Advocates for charter schools insist they are public schools — except when charters are brought into court or before the National Labor Relations Board, in which case they claim to be private corporations, not state actors. They do share in public funding for education, a pie that has not gotten bigger for a decade. So every new charter school takes money away from traditional public schools, requiring them to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, and cut programs.
Charters have a mixed performance record. Those with the highest test scores are known for cherry-picking their students, excluding those with severe disabilities and English-language learners, and pushing out students who are difficult to teach or who have low test scores.
Many other charters have abysmal academic records. The worst are the virtual charters, which have high attrition rates, low test scores, and low graduation rates. As The New York Times recently reported, citing federal data, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow in Ohio has “more students drop out … or fail to finish high school within four years than at any other school in the country.”
Why do state leaders allow such “schools” to exist?

Follow the campaign contributions to key legislators.
Failing the Test
The Gates Foundation’s crusade to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students has been a colossal failure, one from which the organization has yet to back off. (Unlike its $2 billion campaign to encourage smaller high schools, which the foundation admitted in 2008 had not succeeded.)
This has had devastating consequences. President Obama’s Education Department, which had close ties to the Gates Foundation, required states to adopt this untested way of evaluating teachers to be eligible for $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funding.

Since the standardized tests covered only mathematics and reading, some states, like Florida, began rating teachers based on the scores of students they didn’t teach in subjects they didn’t teach.
In New York State, a highly regarded fourth-grade teacher in an affluent suburb sued over her low rating and won a judgment that the state’s method, based on the Gates precept, was “arbitrary and capricious.” When newspapers in Los Angeles and New York City published invalid ratings of thousands of teachers, classroom morale plummeted and veteran educators resigned in protest. One in Los Angeles committed suicide.
The American Statistical Association issued a strong critique of the use of student scores to rate teachers, since scores vary depending on which students are assigned to teachers. The American Educational Research Association also spoke out against the Gates Foundation’s method, saying that those who teach English-language learners and students with disabilities would be unfairly penalized.
Still, big donors were so sure teachers were responsible for low test scores that they fell in love with Teach for America and showered hundreds of millions of dollars on it.
The nonprofit began as a good idea: Invite young college graduates to teach for two years where no teachers were readily available, sort of like the Peace Corps. But then the organization began making absurd claims that its young recruits could “transform” the lives of poor students and even close the achievement gap between children who are rich and poor, white and black. School districts, looking to save money, began replacing experienced teachers with Teach for America recruits, who became the hard-working, high-turnover staff at thousands of new charter schools.
Due in part to that supply of cheap labor, 93 percent of charters are nonunion, which the retail billionaires of the DeVos and Walton families no doubt see as a boon. Unfortunately, Teach for America undermines the teaching profession by asserting that five weeks of training is equivalent to a year or two of professional education. Would doctors or lawyers ever permit untrained recruits to become Heal for America or Litigate for America? It is only the low prestige of the teaching profession that enables it to be so easily infiltrated by amateurs, who mean well but are usually gone in two or three years.
Now that the Trump administration means to use the power and purse of the federal government to replace public schools with private alternatives, it is important to remember that universal public education under democratic control has long been one of the hallmarks of our democracy. No high-performing nation in the world has turned its public schools over to the free market.
Let us remember that public schools were established to prepare young people to become responsible citizens. In addition to teaching knowledge and skills, they are expected to teach character and ethical behavior. Gates, Broad, and other big foundations have forgotten that public education is a public responsibility, not a consumer good. Their grant-making strategies have endangered public education.
This is a time to hope that they will recognize their errors, take a stand against privatization of our public services, and commit themselves to rebuilding public education and civil society.
Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and a research professor at New York University. She writes about education policy at Diane Ravitch’s Blog.

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, School Choice, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

N.Y. Times: Betsy DeVos’ Vision for the Future of Education in America

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2016 //
10

Kate Zernike of the New York Times recently visited Detroit to learn about how school choice was working there. It wasn’t. Parents had many choices, but most were bad choices.

 

Now Zernike shows how Betsy DeVos personally  influenced the current chaotic situation of Detroit. Here is her vision: Let the market rule, with minimal or no regulation:

 

Few disagreed that schools in Detroit were a mess: a chaotic mix of charters and traditional public schools, the worst-performing in the nation.

 

So city leaders across the political spectrum agreed on a fix, with legislation to provide oversight and set standards on how to open schools and close bad ones.

 

But the bill died without even getting a final vote. And the person most influential in killing it is now President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to oversee the nation’s public schools, Betsy DeVos.

 

Her resistance to the legislation last spring is a window into Ms. DeVos’s philosophy and what she might bring to the fierce and often partisan debate about public education across the country, and in particular, the roles of choice and charter schools.

 

The bill’s proposals are common in many states and accepted by many supporters of school choice, like a provision to stop failing charter operators from creating new schools. But Ms. DeVos argued that this kind of oversight would create too much bureaucracy and limit choice. A believer in a freer market than even some free market economists would endorse, Ms. DeVos pushed back on any regulation as too much regulation. Charter schools should be allowed to operate as they wish; parents would judge with their feet.

 

Detroit Public Schools, she argued, should simply be shut down and the system turned over to charters, or the tax dollars given to parents in the form of vouchers to attend private schools.

 

“She is committed to an ideological stance that is solely about the free market, at the expense of practicality and the basic needs of students in the most destabilized environment in the country,” said Tonya Allen, the president of the Skillman Foundation, a nonprofit that works with Detroit children, and a co-chairwoman of the coalition that produced the report that became the basis for the legislation last spring.

 

“If she was showing herself present in places and learning from the practitioners, that’s a fine combination,” Ms. Allen said. “But Betsy never showed up in Detroit. She was very eager to impose experimentation on students that she has not spent time with and children that she does not have consequence for.”

 

The DeVos plan is simple: Get rid of public schools. Give every child a voucher and let parents choose to use them wherever they wish. If vouchers are not possible, open as many charter schools as possible, whether for-profit or not, and allow parents to choose at will, with no regulation or oversight.

 

She is the Darth Vader of school reform. She is Public Enemy #1 of public education.

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Detroit, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos: In Her Own Words

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2016 //
36

What does Betsy DeVos say about education? What does she care about? What matters most? Charters and vouchers. The charter chain that she praises in this video operates for profit. As the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press recently wrote, she is a lobbyist for privatized alternatives to public schools. She doesn’t care for public schools. She doesn’t like them.
TRANSCRIPT Betsy DeVos Interview w Edward J. Pozzuolli

 

VIDEO:
Betsy DeVos of the American Federation for Children
Published on Aug 6, 2015
Ed Pozzuoli, President of Fort Lauderdale based law firm Tripp Scott, sits down with Betsy DeVos, Chairman of the American Federation for Children, to discuss the school choice movement.

 

00:11
INTRO (by Ed Pozzuolli INTERVIEWER):
Good evening and welcome this is Ed Pozzuolli president of Tripp Scott and with me today, I’m so honored, Betsy DeVos. Betsy, welcome.
Betsy DeVos:
Thank you Ed.
INTERVIEWER:
Betsy is the chairman of the American Federation of Children, and is a true Pioneer, and when I say Pioneer, I mean it in the in the real sense of the ‘School Choice Movement’ across the country.

 

First QUESTION by Ed Pozzuolli):
I know you’ve given time, and energy, and money, and strategic advice, and all those great things, and so given that you’re ‘The Pioneer’, where does the ‘School Choice Movement’ stand in the United States?

 

00:42
Betsy DeVos
Well, first of all Ed, thanks for having me here today, and it’s really an honor to be here.

 

So ‘Education (School) Choice’ has made some tremendous strides in the last 3 or 4 years. Now there are 24 States, currently, that have some form of a private school choice program, “Education Choice Program’. And we… We (American Federation for Children & allied organizations) advocate for, and do the politics around, um… all forms of choice. So we believe that parents, and we target programs that are specifically geared to answer the needs of low-income parents and students, we believe that they should have the full range of choices.

 

QUESTION by INTERVIEWER:
So what are they? Give our audience a…
01:24
Betsy DeVos:
Well, starting with private schools, which is probably the most difficult form to get too, politically in people’s minds, Charter Schools, On-line Schools, Virtual Schools, Blended Learning, um… any, any combination thereof, and frankly any, you know, any combination, or any kind of choice that hasn’t yet been thought of. Um. Education Savings Accounts (ALEC), that’s a new one as well. Ah… we, we change policy through political effort to elect or defeat candidates in States based on this issue… their support, or lack of support, for the issue. Then we work on the policies, the legislation, the actual programs that they would consider, and we advocate (READ “lobby”) to get those passed in those legislatures, and with the governors. Once they’re passed, we help to get help parents and kids to find schools, and schools to find parents and kids.

 

02:19
QUESTION by INTERVIEWER: So, not only do you with the politics in the legislation, you also help the actual parents with the opportunities that now are available.
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly, exactly. Because so often, especially low-income parents we have to use different ways to inform them, or make them aware of these opportunities,
INTERVIEWER: Right.
Betsy DeVos:
…and help them with the application process, um… because most of them are means-tested, help them with finding the resources to be able to make the application, and, and really just helping the programs to be successful. Indiana’s a really great example.
INTERVIEWER: Great example..
Betsy DeVos:
You know this is only, I think, the third or fourth year of the program it’s already the largest voucher program in the country…
INTERVIEWER: Yep.
Betsy DeVos:
…and the demand is huge, not enough, not all of the parents and the students that apply are able to get into the program every year. So there’s gonna (going to be) a demand for more providers, more schools, more opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators, and creators to come in, and start new ways of approaching education.

 

03:23
INTERVIEWER:
So in Indiana does the voucher program, but just to give our reviewers an understanding, lower-income families are also now have the choice of charter schools….
Betsy DeVos: Absolutely.
INTERVIEWER:
They also have the choice in the turnaround schools in Indiana.
Betsy DeVos: Yep.
INTERVIEWER:
And as well as the normal traditional public schools which are now having to compete with these other options.
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly, exactly.

03:43
QUESTION by INTERVIEWER:
What… are we still be seeing results? We’re looking at results-oriented for the benefit of the child, are we seeing that?
Betsy DeVos:
I… We definitely ARE seeing the results. And you know so many people get focused on school buildings, and the results of buildings, (REF to testing and evaluation systems in MI???) and I encourage them to really look at each individual child, cuz (because) that’s what we’re really concerned about. Right? How much is one kid learning, or what how much is one kid getting turned on to new opportunities, and new things that they haven’t um.. even been introduced to previously.

 

04:13
INTERVIEWER:
Now I know that you are in Florida is a, a dear spot in your heart…
Betsy DeVos: Yeah… (Dick & Betsy DeVos have at least one home in Florida in Vero Beach).
INTERVIEWER:
.. you live here, and so tell us a little bit about what’s going on in Florida, and some of the developments in the ‘School Choice Movement’ here.

 

04:26
Betsy DeVos:
Well, Florida I always cite Florida as really the farthest along, in terms of providing the widest range of choices, and the greatest access to those choices, of any state in the country. And from a political standpoint, having real bipartisan support for these choices. Because today, and I will, ya know, cite the very successful ‘Tax Credit Scholarship Program’ (vouchers) with over 70,000 children participating this year. Um, that program however, is under attack by those who are defenders of the ‘status quo’, and that will have to be litigated. But we’re very confident that as that program, and all the choices in Florida continue to grow, and as more students find success because of those choices, the constituency for ‘choices’, the full range, is going to continue to be very strong, and grow even stronger.

 

05:16
INTERVIEWER:
So those opportunities, explain to our viewers what that is.
Betsy DeVos:
The ‘Tax Credit Opportunity Scholarship’ is a tax credit against corporate taxes in the State of Florida. So if you have a business that pays Florida state corporate taxes, you can redesignate up to, I believe it’s 75%, of your corporate tax burden to the state annually into a ‘scholarship fund’. That scholarship fund then, is ‘vouchered out’, or giving out in, in incremental amounts to low-income students, and their families, to choose the school, or education setting, that’s gonna (going to) work best for them.

 

05:57
INTERVIEWER:
So then the child and their family can use the voucher and attend a private school…
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly.
INTERVIEWER:
…or parochial school or whatever…
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly.
INTERVIEWER:
And so since there are no ‘state monies’ involved it all essentially all ‘private monies’ with the ‘tax credit’ method.
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly. Exactly because those funds never go into the state coffers to begin with.

 

06:13
INTERVIEWER:
So for some of our ‘corporate partners’ who will watch this….
Betsy DeVos:
It’s a great opportunity… ABSOLUTELY it is (Betsy with a big smile).

 

06:19-06:23
INTERVIEWER:
Talk a little bit about in Florida the ‘charter school movement’, because that’s another element of ‘choice’ in Florida.
Betsy DeVos:
Well, the ‘Charter School Movement’ in Florida continues to be strong and grow even stronger. And ah,
INTERVIEWER:
By a quarter million kids…
Betsy DeVos:
Exactly. ‘Charter Schools USA’ (EMO), great provider of, of, of great opportunities for kids. Having visited one with Jon (Jonathan) and Sherry Hage (Founders of Charter Schools USA) not too long ago, (I’m) very impressed with ah, the approach to learning, to education, there. And, ah, charter schools are a very vibrant option and opportunity for parents in Florida too.

 

06:53
INTERVIEWER:
I think that’s true, and so what do you think the future of the ‘Choice Movement’ is in the United States?
06:59
Betsy DeVos:
I think as more and more parents realize that.. um.. their children’s future opportunities really are tied directly to the ability of each of their children to grow, and develop to their fullest potential, in other words get a good education, they are gonna (going to) become more demanding of that opportunity, of wider opportunities, because there are far too many.. um.. educational settings that just aren’t meeting the needs of all of the… all of today’s kids. And we think about the system that most kids are attending today the ‘traditional public schools’, and it’s a system that was brought to us two hundred years ago, by the Prussians, a very much an ‘industrial, factory model’ of education, and how much our society has changed today.
INTERVIEWER:
Right.
Betsy DeVos:
Technology has brought so many new opportunities, and we need to embrace that, and not only embrace it, but be bold about it, and allow people who are innovative and creative to come and help us think differently about how we could do education.

 

08:04
INTERVIEWER:
And so the ‘Choice Movement’ is truly what they called ‘disruptor’ in a certain sense….
Betsy DeVos:
It is indeed, it is indeed… (Betsy calls herself a “disruptor”). And the more of a ‘marketplace’ we have for education, the more, I think, the better.. um.. in general, kids are going to do educationally, and certainly the better individually, kids are going to be able to do.

 

08:23
INTERVIEWER:
And ultimately that’s the key…
Betsy DeVos:
And that is the key.

 

08:26
INTERVIEWER:
Well with that Betsy, I really do I want to take this opportunity and thank you again for your great work in this area and providing unbelievable ‘Educational Choice’ across the country, particularly for those who need it most, and so thank you.
Betsy DeVos:
Thank you Ed, thank you..

 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Peter Greene Channels Betsy DeVos Giving a Speech

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2016 //
13

Peter Greene imagines Betsy DeVos’s first speech to the people of her hometown Grand Rapids, Michigan, explaining her belief in replacing public schools with privately managed charters and religious schools.

Here, in Greene’s words, is a portion of Betsy’s sales pitch for “school choice”; open the link to read it all:

You have to understand– when the founding fathers said that all men were created equal, they didn’t mean that all men are actually equal. The Puritans understood that some people are favored by God and therefor blessed with greater prosperity than others. These Chosen are more favored, more suited to take dominion over the rest of creation, more deserving of honor. They’re just better.

Are some people better than others just because they’re rich? No, that would be ridiculous. They’re rich because they’re better. People criticize me because every cent I have either was passed to me either by my parents or my husband, but those people are missing the point. God made me rich because I deserve it.

These signs of God’s favor and an individual’s superiority used to be pretty clearcut, and they used to be the foundation of America. But the founders made one crucial mistake– they let all sorts of people vote, and over time, those people got uppity. There was a time when America was still great, back when everybody knew his or her place, back when black people and poor people handicapped people and non-Christians didn’t try to take things they weren’t entitled to. Back when the homosexuals had the decency to pretend they didn’t exist. But those days are gone– ruined by a bunch of uppity people who won’t just shut up and listen to those of us who know better. Now homosexuals and blacks and women and Muslims can all strut around like they’re perfectly normal and it’s we decent Christians who have to hold our tongue and avoid saying simple things like “Jesus hates you and you’re going to hell.” It’s a topsy turvy world.

And it all starts in school.

We let the children of the better class of people mix with the children of Those People. Teachers don’t seem to know their place, and insist on teaching things they just shouldn’t teach, the kinds of things that students were never taught back when America was great– certainly not in the fine private schools my children and I attended. That is why I absolutely support the Common Core– someone has to tell Those People what they should teach. However, I understand that some of you are not fans of Common Core, and so I totally promise that the federal regulations requiring Common Core will be stricken from the law, along with the regulations requiring students to wear clown shoes and the regulations requiring lunch ladies to be certified Yeti’s. I guarantee you that in just a few months, all of those laws will be gone, and you will be free to have your state government enforce Common Core under some other name.

We will also do our best to crush both teacher unions and all those other unions, too. Unions are unnatural, a terrible attempt to interfere with the natural order of things. People who want to control working conditions and wages should not choose to be the kind of people who work at those jobs. It is their place to simply do their jobs and let those of us who Know Better make the important decisions.

Government has also interfered with the God-given natural order of things by forcing money to flow to people who don’t deserve it. If God wanted Those People to have money, He would have made them rich, and it is not government’s place to interfere with that just process. By getting government to takes its paws off schools, a choice and charter system can allow money to again flow to those who actually deserve it. A choice and charter system also allows children of the better people to get their education without having to deal with the children of Those People. Really, isn’t it better when people associate with their own kind?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Vouchers

Arthur Camins to Trump: Hands Off Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
7

Arthur Camins writes in Huffington Post what should be a rallying cry for parents, educators, and citizens:

 

“Keep the government’s hands off our public schools!”

 

With his selection of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education, Donald Trump has made it clear. He wants to take away your public school. Tell him, “Keep the government’s hands off our public schools!…”

 

Many need improvement, but it is democratically governed public schools that have made America great- not private schools and not charter schools. We all know that we can love what is imperfect. We need to strengthen the marriage between public schools and equity, not a divorce….

 

Democratically controlled schools for all are the norm. Trump and his supporters seek a taxpayer-funded private option to undermine and even replace the existing public school system. Make no mistake. Profit and exclusivity will trump quality and inclusiveness. Privatization means working class children get less and the wealthy keep getting more…

 

In short, in the name of liberty and freedom, the modern conservative movement represents an exaltation of selfishness. …A striking example is the growing campaign to shift federal and state funding from public schools to charter schools and private schools through vouchers. Sadly, the former has been supported by many Democrats, while the latter has been the long-held dream of “competition solves everything” Republicans and those seeking to tear down our historic church-state barriers.

 

For over a century, taxpayer-funded public schools that were governed by locally elected school boards lived side-by-side with privately funded and governed non-sectarian and religiously-affiliated schools. The vast majority of parents chose the former for their children. The prevailing, but often contested, assumption was that parents had a right to send their children to private schools, but at their expense.

 

We are at a crossroads. Integration, diversity, and democracy are under attack as unifying national priorities here in the US and around the world. The ethos of “be out for yourself” is gaining ascendancy over “I am my brothers’ and sisters’ keeper” as inequity and terrorism erode hope and security. In that context, entrepreneurs seek to undermine confidence and exacerbate parent anxiety about the quality and safety of public schools, and exploit a potentially vast education market. Persistent underfunding aids this cynical agenda….

 

We have a lot to do to improve education in the US. Inequity is persistent and too many schools fall far short on citizenship development. However, public opinion surveys consistently show that parents express greater satisfaction with and confidence in their children’s schools and teachers than with the schools they do not experience first hand.

 

Our great challenge ahead for education as with other critical features of community wellbeing is to find the language and solutions to mobilize people across their perceived disparate needs to find common cause.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

John Thompson: We Can’t Let Betsy DeVos Destroy Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
19

John Thompson is a teacher and historian in Oklahoma.

 

 

As the Daily Oklahoman’s Ben Felder explains, “Education savings accounts (ESAs) and vouchers have not been easy sells, including in the GOP-controlled Oklahoma Legislature.” Until this November, the same argument which defeated vouchers last year would have seemed to be persuasive. Our schools have been clobbered by a 27% decrease in per-student funding and they can’t stand a further reduction. Even a month ago, a grassroots coalition of educators and families appeared ready to send more teachers to the legislature, and to pass SQ 779, which would have raised teachers’ wages.

 

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-school-voucher-advocates-see-a-political-opening/article/5529475

 

Then a well-funded and false advertising campaign helped derail the teacher raise, and Betsy DeVos’ the American Federation for Children, “spent nearly $170,000 in Oklahoma campaigns this year, often in opposition to public school teachers who were also running.” So, Felder now reports, “last month’s election results on both the national and state level have some school choice advocates seeing a political opening.” He cites Republican Sen. Kyle Loveless, “‘There is definitely going to be some movement on education savings accounts this next year in Oklahoma … Last year we were a couple of votes short in the Senate but I think we picked those seats up this year.'”

 

In addition to American Federation of Children’s money, a series of Indiana corporate reformers have repeatedly come to Oklahoma and pushed the DeVos/Trump/Pence agenda. So, it is doubly important that Oklahoma legislators, like their counterparts across the nation, become aware of what former Gov. Mike Pence and the $1.3 million that DeVos and her political action committee poured into Indiana have bought – and at what price.

 

Chalkbeat Indiana’s Nicholas Garcia, in “Six Things to Know about Indiana’s School Voucher Program, A Possible Model for Ed Sec Nominee Betsy DeVos,” explains that “the number of students using vouchers rose from 3,911 in 2011, when the program launched, to 32,686 in 2016.” Originally, vouchers were pushed as a way to help poor students in failing schools, but “a growing portion of Indiana voucher users are from middle-class families, and growth has been greatest among suburban families.” Now, “60 percent of Indiana voucher users are white, and about 31 percent are from middle-income families — not exactly the student population that struggles most in the state’s schools.”

 

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/11/30/six-things-to-know-about-indianas-school-voucher-program-a-possible-model-for-betsy-devos/

 

Even more disturbing is the way that vouchers have grown into a greater threat to the financial stability of schools, “In 2011, just 9 percent of voucher users had never before gone to public school, Chalkbeat reports, “That was true for more than half of students using vouchers in 2016. So, Indiana isn’t offering an escape from failing schools but a subsidy for many who would never attend a public school.

 

Moreover, researchers at Notre Dame University conducted a long-term study which found that “students who switched from traditional public schools to Catholic schools actually did worse in math.” They also increase student mobility which undermines student performance.

 

Of course, student performance outcomes aren’t the outcomes that motivate many voucher advocates. DeVos has said that her goal is not to “stay in our own faith territory,” but to “advance God’s Kingdom.” As Politico’s Benjamin Wermund reports, DeVos sees school choice as a path to “greater Kingdom gain.”

 

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

 

Given the importance of religious issues in the voucher fights, an analysis by Mother Jones’s Stephanie Mencimer is timely. She found that, “Pence’s voucher program ballooned into a $135 million annual bonanza almost exclusively benefiting private religious schools–ranging from those teaching the Koran to Christian schools teaching creationism and the Bible as literal truth–at the expense of regular and usually better-performing public schools.”

 

Mencimer looked into the 316 schools receiving vouchers and she could only find four that weren’t religious. However, she found curricula that teaches creationism and Biblical stories and parables as literally true. Mencimer learned:

 

Among the more popular textbooks are some from Bob Jones University that are known for teaching that humans and dinosaurs existed on the Earth at the same time and that dragons were real. BJU textbooks have also promoted a positive view of the KKK, writing in one book, “the Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross to target bootleggers, wife beaters and immoral movies.”

 

Moreover, Mother Jones cites a young Muslim student who attended a voucher school for about eight weeks, “as he bounced around several schools on his way to becoming radicalized. In September, he was indicted for providing material support to terrorists after allegedly trying to join ISIS.”

 

Mother Jones further describes the deplorable student performance of many voucher schools. In 2015, less than 9 percent of the students at a Horizon Christian Academy campus passed the state standardized tests in math and English. And it adds telling details to the Chalkbeat Indiana’s narrative. Mother Jones found:

 

Some of the fastest growth in voucher use has occurred in some of the state’s most affluent suburbs. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based think tank, recently concluded that because white children’s participation in the voucher program dwarfed the next largest racial group by 44 points, the vouchers were effectively helping to resegregate public schools.

 

It’s bad enough that Trump seeks billions of dollars to fund vouchers. But, especially in poor states and districts, the DeVos/Trump/Pence policy could be worse than anything previously imagined. Not all states and school districts that have been targeted by Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos are as vulnerable as those in Oklahoma, but as a recent NPR report explains, there are plenty of other systems that are already overwhelmed.

 

KOSU’s Emily Wendler and WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook, in “Public School Funding at a Loss, in Oklahoma and Elsewhere,” started a national tour of under-funded and challenged school systems to first answer the question “How Low Can a State Go?” and still educate its kids. Second, it asks what effect DeVos will have on these underfunded systems.

 

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/11/30/oklahoma-schools-four-day-weeks

 

Other states have taken the route pioneered by Kansas, Michigan, and Oklahoma and deliberately starve their governmental services. This new voucher campaign, combined with public and private charters, and virtual schools could push many of those states across a “tipping point,” and creating new lows in public schooling, constitutional democracy, and common decency.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Oklahoma, Privatization, Vouchers

Texas: Pastors Stand Together Against Vouchers: They Join the Honor Roll!

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2016 //
7

Rev. Charles Foster Johnson has organized strong resistance to the vouchers touted by the most powerful elected official in Texas, not the governor, but the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a former talk show host. Rev. Johnson is leader to Pastors for Texas Children, which has 2,000 members across the state. They are united in their opposition to vouchers and their support for public schools. Year after year, they have defeated vouchers in the legislature, and they are gearing up to fight them again. You can read more about his and his organization here, at “Reporting Texas.”

 

I am happy to place Rev. Johnson and Pastors for Texas Children on the blog’s honor roll for their stalwart defense of public schools, of the children of Texas, of religious liberty, and of the principle of separation of church and state.

 

 

Johnson, 59, is the Fort Worth-based executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, a network of about 2,000 church leaders around the state who work to support pubic schools.

 

Johnson and his group have emerged as chief adversaries of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Patrick champions a breed of education reform forged around vouchers — which steer money from public schools to parents to pay private school tuition.

 

“The lieutenant governor said, a couple of weeks ago, he’ll keep bringing it up until it passes,” Foster told the pastors, who were gathered for a meeting of Texas Baptists Committed in Waco. “It’s up to us to stop him.”

 

In his baritone southern drawl, Johnson told the pastors that vouchers siphon funds from schools in low-income neighborhoods and violate the separation of church and state enshrined in the First Amendment. School vouchers contradict God’s law of religious liberty, he said, by providing government support for religion.

 

The organization’s mission is twofold: To advocate for public education with state lawmakers and to mobilize individual churches to support public schools by providing services such as student mentoring and teacher appreciation events.

 

Members have linked dozens of churches with public schools, met with more than 100 lawmakers since the organization’s inception in 2013, and published dozens of anti-school voucher editorials in newspapers across Texas.

Categories Honor Roll, Religion, Resistance, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Texas, Vouchers

Andre Perry: Reformers Should Not Criticize Trump When They Support His Policies

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2016 //
19

Andre Perry was one of the earliest charter school leaders in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and one of the few leaders of color. He became disillusioned with some parts of the reforms, especially the marginalization of local community voices.

 

In this article, he calls out reformers who feel they must distance themselves from Trump because of his comments that stirred racism. Perry said the same reformers are quietly pleased that the incoming administration will enlarge and enrich the charter sector.

 

He writes:

 

“Playing the politics of niceness has never been so convenient for the Dems of education reform. DeVos’s belief in limited state oversight, for-profit charter management and vouchers didn’t give Democrat proponents of charter schools any pause in the past. And for many it doesn’t now.
“As the chief architect of education reform in Michigan, DeVos should take blame for doing no favors to struggling public schools in Detroit and the rest of the state. Michigan is a prime example of what not to do in education reform. Her failing creation of a wide-open market is a case study in why there should be limits on school choice.

 

“However, the inability of reform-leaning Democrats to renounce DeVos and her policies in the past reveals a complicity in her nomination. Authentic Democratic notions of accountability simply don’t jibe with Republican ideals of choice. You also don’t have to be cozy with your opponents to accomplish your policy goals. But for the reward of charter schools, certain Democrats have abandoned their party’s principles and muzzled their opposition to Republican policies in education and beyond.

 

“Young people don’t live wholly in schools; they live in communities. If Democrat reformers want children to live in nurturing communities and not just charter schools, they must move beyond myopic quid pro quo politics.

 

“Democrats can no longer afford to wittingly miss the forest for the charter school trees.
“Will Dems fight voucher policies, which have been shown to be largely ineffective, and harmful in some cases, to an extent that makes the Secretary uncomfortable? Will Dems push for the kind of accountability that would put a moratorium on the loose and deleterious system of charters in DeVos’ home state of Michigan?
“I look forward to Democrats divorcing themselves from a relationship of convenience with Republicans, who have elevated what a school choice proponent really looks like in DeVos. Real dissent from Democrats should equate to aggressively limiting DeVos’s policies, which have included restricting state oversight, promoting for-profit charter management organizations and encouraging vouchers for private schools including those that are faith-based.
“Philosophically, Democrats shouldn’t believe in this kind of school choice.”

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers
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