A collection of articles and information, sorted by date, about President-elect Trump's choice for US Secretary of Education. Check back frequently for additional articles.
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December 3, 2016
From Badass Teachers Association
A Cry of Disgust over the appointment of Betsy DeVos By: Sandra Parker
Mrs. DeVos comes from privilege. Her father owned and employed one quarter of Holland Michigan’s residents. She attended parochial schools and then moved on to Calvin College, a product of the Christian Reformed Church. Mrs. DeVos has a degree in Political Science and Business Administration. One degree in a field that is not related to the education field at all. One degree only. She came from money and married into money. Her husband ran for governor in our state and lost. Her own children also attended private schools. Not public. Yet, this woman has said (self-acclaimed) to have a strong passion for public education. She has never worked for a public school, for that matter, she has never worked for or in any school. She does not believe in or supports public education. She believes that public school teachers are overpaid (heck yeah, I laugh all the way to the bank every two weeks and take vacations in my private villa in the coast of Monaco). She is a strong for profit education proponent. She has invested millions of dollars in Christian education. She strongly believes in taking public school funds and placing them into Christian schools or other such private schools. She is a strong proponent of the Common Core, a system that has taken down the public school’s ability to succeed.
From deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's EduBlog
Betsy DeVos and Her 2015-16 School Choice Yearbook
In short, this yearbook includes no evidence to DeVos’ assumption, “Educational choice is an essential part of the solution to our nation’s education challenges, including the greater issue of education inequality in America.”
From Wendy Lecker
DeVos’ crusade against public education
President-elect Donald Trump selected Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos as his candidate for Secretary of Education. The DeVos nomination should alarm anyone who values public education. First, she is wholly unqualified to be Secretary of Education. She has no education degree or background, and has never worked in, attended or sent her children to public school. More worrisome, she and her husband have been on a 20-plus year crusade to eliminate public education.
From Huffington Post
Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Pick Wants To Make Christianity A Bigger Part Of Schooling
Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, spoke at a 2001 conference with her husband, Dick, about using educational philanthropy to promote their conservative Christian worldview to children.
From Protect Public Schools
The Invasion of the Public School Snatchers
Public schools are in danger. The public school, that long-standing symbol and foundation of democracy, is threatened by people who either sincerely believe that our public schools are failures (they are not) and that "school choice" is the answer (it is not), or who are deeply entwined with the privatizing forces that hope to make a profit by their demise. It is my belief that most of those carrying the "school choice" mantra forward, are in the latter group, because evidence exists that school choice is not the solution for the problems besetting urban schools. Betsy Devos is certainly one of those rabid reformers who cares little for results, wants no transparency for the charter schools she supports, and would love nothing more than to take tax dollars away from public schools and transfer them to unregulated charters or religious schools.
From NewsOK
Oklahoma school voucher advocates see a political opening
President-elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary manages a political action committee that successfully backed several Oklahoma candidates last month, potentially giving the state Legislature enough votes to pass through a school voucher plan.
Trump tapped Betsy DeVos to head the U.S. Department of Education, despite not having worked as an educator.
Instead, DeVos has operated the American Federation for Children, a nonprofit that spent nearly $170,000 in Oklahoma campaigns this year, often in opposition to public school teachers who were also running.
December 2, 2016
From Fred Klonsky
Betsy DeVos and a national system of market-based schools. The only problem would be stupid parents.
Trumps choice of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary is a terrible one for the country’s parents and students.
Naturally, for most of those who want an end to public schools and a national system of market-based education, the DeVos choice is a gift.
From Clemsy's Corner
Betsy Devos and Public Education: The Coming Storm
The past two administrations have overseen the incremental dismantling of public education.
But it looks like "incremental" is not on Minority President Trump's education agenda. His choice of Betsy DeVos tells us all we need to know: She has no affiliation with the public school system. She has never worked in one. She is not an educator. She never attended a public school. Her children never attended a public school.
From Vox
Donald Trump’s huge, ambitious school voucher plan, explained
Unlike most of her predecessors, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, has never taught in a public school or college, run a school district or public university, served on a school board, or shaped state education policy. DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist, instead made her name as an advocate for school vouchers — the idea of letting students use public money to attend private schools.
Together, DeVos and Trump want to oversee the biggest change to American public education in half a century. Trump’s plan for his first 100 days includes a $20 billion federal voucher program for children living in poverty, a program he’d likely pay for by dismantling the biggest existing system of federal support for public schools.
From Lily's Blackboard
Educators react to Trump nominee Betsy DeVos
Educators react to Trump nominee Betsy DeVos
From Educarenow
Reading Betsy DeVos: All About Children?
Let me start with my shock that someone like Betsy DeVos could ever be named Secretary of Education. Much has been written about DeVos (see this for one of the best pieces) so I won’t go into it all other than to express my disdain. Really, it seems like getting a position in the Trump administration is like joining a golf club- just do what DeVos has done- pay your fee. Your ability or actual experience are irrelevant if you can afford the position.
From Teacher in a Strange Land
Teacher Says: Change the World!
Money talks. Those that have a lot of money end up talking the loudest. The new Secretary of Education is no exception. National Heritage Academy is the largest charter in America founded in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The founder has strong ties to Mrs. DeVos and the Republican party. Mrs. DeVos being appointed simply means that she protects the for-profit charter movement in her own backyard. She's no different than any other politician.
On the other side, years of bargaining for more and more, and better and better, as the rest of America fell to its knees, became the focus of so many issues for unions. Districts have continued to short pension funds due to many economic factors, including less money coming in. FEWER STUDENTS IN SCHOOLS MEANS LESS MONEY. Just as I am tired of hearing how crappy public education is, I'm tired of teachers ignoring this.
From Politico
Trump's education pick says reform can 'advance God's Kingdom'
The billionaire philanthropist whom Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Education Department once compared her work in education reform to a biblical battleground where she wants to "advance God's Kingdom."
Trump’s pick, Betsy DeVos, a national leader of the school choice movement, has pursued that work in large part by spending millions to promote the use of taxpayer dollars on private and religious schools.
From Eclecta Blog
The truth about school “choice”
Like President-designate Donald Trump, and his nominee for Secretary of Education, Michigan billionaire and Amway heiress, Betsy DeVos, I’m a huuuuge proponent of “school choice.”
What’s more American than the freedom to choose (unless you’re a woman, and we’re talking about reproductive health choices–but I digress…)? It’s a fundamental human right to be able to make important personal choices about your life, a right that conservatives like Mr. Trump and Ms. DeVos believe in deeply (unless you’re gay and want to choose marry your same-sex partner; or transgender and want to choose what bathroom to use…but again, I’m getting off track…).
From Politico
Vouchers have been a tough sell when put to a vote
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.”
December 1, 2016
From Open Secrets
Betsy DeVos and her big-giving relatives: Family qualifies as GOP royalty
Since 1989, Betsy DeVos and her relatives have given at least $20.2 million to Republican candidates, party committees, PACs and super PACs, according to an OpenSecrets.org analysis. (A tabbed spreadsheet is here.) Amway, the multilevel marketing giant now known as Alticor that earned much of the family its wealth, gave another nearly $3.6 million to the party prior to 2002. And that’s just at the federal level — family members have given hundreds of millions more to state and local level politics and to nonprofit groups, think tanks and media outlets championing their favored conservative causes.
From OurFuture.Org
Betsy DeVos May Complete The Big Money Takeover Of Our Nation’s Schools
Reactions to President-Elect Donald Trump’s announcement of Michigan philanthropist Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education have ranged from high praise, to wary acceptance, to immediate condemnation.
What few have noticed is how much her nomination represents business as usual in national education policy-making.
This is not to normalize extremism in politics and government because DeVos certainly has extreme views on a range of issues, as explained below.
But what DeVos represents in a very great sense is how rich people’s grip on the nation’s public education system has reached a choking point.
From deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's EduBlog
A Challenge for Campbell Brown’s The 74: Publicize Your Detailed History
What is interesting is that The Seventy Four will not disclose the amount of DeVos’ contribution even as Seventy Four CEO Romy Drucker tries to downplay the mysterious contribution by saying that the final payment from DeVos to The Seventy Four (nonprofit name: The 74 Media, Inc.) is set to be paid before 2016 ends.
Drucker also states that since DeVos will be US secretary of education, The Seventy Four will not seek future funding from her foundation. However, DeVos will not be sitting on the board of her foundation while she is US ed secretary, so there really is no “obviously” about the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation not spending their money whithersoever they will, including at The Seventy Four.
From Alan Singer at HuffPo
Charter School Failure (The Schools, Not The Kids)
President-elect Donald “Hardly-a-Landslide” Trump and nominee for Secretary of the federal Department of Education, Betsy “Voucher Queen” DeVos, are championing vouchers and charter schools as ways to dismantle public education, subsidize private and religious schools, provide a financial windfall to shady edu-businesses, break teacher unions, and support segregation academies.
From The Chicago Tribune
CTU president blasts Trump's education secretary pick: 'She's a nightmare'
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis.
Lewis said Betsy DeVos, an advocate for privately run charter schools and school vouchers, would seek to expand policies that have "been proven to not work."
"Don't ask me why he picked her. I don't know who put her name on the list, but she's a nightmare," Lewis said of DeVos. "I mean, it's OK, we can occupy the (Department of Education). We've done it before, and I believe in direct action and mass movement. So, it'll happen."
From PressConnects/Press and Sun Bulletin
DeVos would undermine public schools
“Trump’s education pick favors parents” says the headline in Laurence Reisman’s Nov. 30 column.
True, if the parents are profit-seeking entrepreneurs who plan to open a charter school. Otherwise, parents, along with their children and teachers are likely to be miserable with Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education.
From A View From the Edge
Educational “Entitlement” Accounts
With the nomination of Bet$y DeVo$ on our next US Secretary of Education, there is little doubt we will be spending much of the next few years talking a lot about school choice, charter schools, and vouchers.
If Donald Trump’s ultimate goal is to steer public dollars away from traditional public schools and into the pockets of charter operators and private schools, it would have been hard for him to find anyone more passionate about this mission than Ms. DeVos.
From janresseger
Important Reading on Betsy DeVos
Yesterday Romy Drucker, CEO of The 74, tried to clarify further in a formal statement posted on The 74 website: “Two years ago, in 2014, the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation approved a two-year general operating support grant for The 74. The final disbursement of those funds, in the first quarter of 2016, means that the foundation is an active donor only through the end of this year. Obviously, given Ms. DeVos’s potential role in the federal government, The 74 will not be seeking additional funding for 2017 or beyond. In addition to The 74 having received support from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Foundation, my co-founder and the site’s editor-in-chief, Campbell Brown, sits on the board of the American Federation for Children, which Betsy DeVos previously chaired… Still, given Ms. Brown’s close ties to Ms. DeVos, she is recusing herself from editorial involvement in the coverage of Ms. DeVos and her upcoming confirmation hearing.”
This is, of course, a case of DeVos philanthropy not only underwriting the pro-privatization American Federation for Children and the Great Lakes Education Project, which has lobbied for unregulated expansion of charter schools, but also granting the seed money for Campbell Brown to launch a news outlet that in subtle and obvious ways favors the very same education ideas that Betsy DeVos’s organizations promote—even while the news site pretends to be objective.
From Diane Ravitch
John Thompson on the Reformers’ Dilemma: To Trump or Not to Trump
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.”
From The Atlantic
The Notable Silence of New York's Charter-School Leaders
When news broke that President-elect Donald Trump tapped the school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos as U.S. education secretary, New York City’s charter-school sector was relatively quiet. With the exception of the Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, who tweeted she was “thrilled,” local charter-school leaders and advocates have mostly kept to themselves.
From Democracy Now
Public (School) Enemy No. 1: Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Pick for Education Secretary
She’s an enemy of public schools. She is someone who has used her inherited wealth and the wealth that she has married into to try to distort and reshape our laws to advance her personal views, which are that we should basically redefine public education to mean our tax dollars should be going to fund private schools, religious schools that advance her worldview. And so, she’s someone who didn’t even send her kids to public schools. She someone who, basically, has devoted her wealth to attacking our campaign finance laws, to attacking labor laws, and to attacking the very idea of having universal public education for all students that’s truly public. So, she’s someone who is manifestly unqualified.
From Education Week
See Betsy DeVos' Donations to Senators Who Will Oversee Her Confirmation
In the 2016 election year, for example, the two gave $2.7 million to Republican candidates and nothing to Democrats, as we reported earlier. But their campaign-donation record goes back much further. And it includes contributions to several senators who may vote on Betsy DeVos' confirmation in the Senate education committee and subsequently on the Senate floor—more on that below. We haven't seen any campaign finance records, however, showing they donated to Trump's presidential campaign.
November 30, 2016
From Education Votes (NEA)
5 reasons why Trump pick Betsy DeVos is wrong for Secretary of Education
Last week, president-elect Donald Trump nominated as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a billionaire and conservative mega-donor who has no classroom experience, and whose work in public education consists mainly of efforts to privatize it.
“In Michigan, we know firsthand how disastrous DeVos’ ideology is, as she has spent decades wielding her family’s money and influence to destroy public education and turn our schools and students over to for-profit corporations,” said Michigan Education Association President Steven Cook, who served as a paraprofessional in Lansing Public Schools for 15 years.
From University Herald
Badass Teachers Association Vs Education Secretary Betsy DeVos? Nominee Already Getting Backlash
A group of DeVos protestors in St. Petersburg said that she is not the right person to preserve and protect public education. For one, they said, she has never attended public school and neither did her children. She has not worked alongside, with or against the public school as well. These school teachers protesting against Trump's choice is apprehensive about DeVos' ideas of school vouchers.
From Diane Ravitch
DeVos Fought to Keep Michigan Charters Unregulated and Unaccountable
The DeVos family gave out $1.5 million in campaign contributions to make sure that charter schools continued to be unregulated and unaccountable.
From Diane Ravitch
Post-Election Report: Betsy DeVos’ Organization Counts Its Victories Over Public Schools
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.
From The Guardian
Public schools may not survive Trump's billionaire wrecking crew
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.
From Chalkbeat
Six things to know about Indiana’s school voucher program, a possible model for ed sec nominee Betsy DeVos
...her advocacy helped influence the program in neighboring Indiana, which is expansive, entrenched — and could be a model if Trump and DeVos move forward with trying to push a national voucher program.
Here are six important things to know about vouchers in Indiana...
From Current Affairs
WHY IS “THE DECIMATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS” A BAD THING?
This problem frequently occurs in progressive condemnations of school privatization schemes. Recently, Donald Trump appointed billionaire Betsy DeVos to lead his Department Education. The general reaction from the left has been horror and disgust, with the consensus view being that DeVos is something like the Education Secretary from Hell (a view I happen to share). This is because DeVos is a longtime advocate of both charter schools and voucher programs, and has spent large amounts of money helping transform Michigan’s public schools into a heavily charter-based system. DeVos apparently believes, like many others in the “school choice” movement, that the government should not really be in the business of running schools, but should hand out credits to parents and have private schools and charters compete over students.
For posts and articles from December 20 through December 24, 2016 Click HERE.
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