Live Long and Prosper...

We all knew that Betsy DeVos was going to be a problem for public education. She didn't hide her disdain for the common folk who sent their children to America's public schools. She didn't hide the fact that she wanted to privatize all the education in the U.S.

So it was no surprise that last week she presented the Trump Administration's plans to support privatization and destroy public education.

[emphasis in any of the quoted material below is mine]


ACCOUNTABILITY: FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS ONLY

DeVos Still Anti-Accountability

The bludgeon used by "reformers" against public schools has been accountability based on test scores. As we have learned in Indiana, that accountability is only meant for public schools. Schools accepting vouchers or charters can get their grades changed, can get loan forgiveness when they collapse, can continue to receive state funding even after having "failed," and can even choose their own students.

Accountability is the weapon used to hurt public education, and then claim that public schools are failing. As far as DeVos is concerned, no such accountability is needed for schools run privately.

...What we know is what we've known since the days that DeVos beat back attempts at accountability measures in Michigan-- she opposes anything that might in any way tie the hands of the Right Kind of People, the people who deserve to set policy and create schools and profit from all of it.

I can understand how liberals are bothered by this policy. What I don't quite understand is where the conservatives are. Where are all the people who built up the education reform wave in the first place with rallying calls for teacher accountability and school accountability and don't just trustingly throw money at schools and where the hell are our tax dollars going, anyway? Oh wait-- they are off in the corner, counting up all the money they aren't going to pay in taxes under the GOP plan.

As my college ed prof told us in the seventies, the accountability needle keeps swinging back and forth-- but this time it has gone so far in the accountability direction that it has come out the other side in a place so unaccountable that the federal Secretary of Education cannot imagine a situation in which she would deny federal dollars to any voucher school, ever, for any reason. This isn't just throwing money at schools-- it's lighting the money on fire and throwing it off a cliff. This is wrapping all the money around a big club that will be used to beat anybody who's not white and wealthy and healthy.

Betsy DeVos Continues Her Push For Private School Vouchers

One of the problems with "school choice" programs (aside from the fact that the "choice" is with the school, not the parents) is the lack of public oversight. Millions of taxpayer dollars are funneled into private, religious, and charter schools, which are given fewer restrictions for how money is being used. Nearly every day there's another scandal in which someone misappropriates or misuses funds meant for educating children.

...We have a responsibility to provide great public schools to every kid in America. Instead of strongly investing in public schools where 90 percent of kids go, Trump’s budget cuts billions of dollars from key programs and would divert already scarce funding to private schools.

Members of Congress pressed DeVos on the fact that these private schools, even though they get taxpayer funds through vouchers, discriminate against students and are unaccountable to the public. Although she tried to evade their questions, it was clear that she has no interest in ensuring meaningful oversight of schools or barring discrimination in a federal voucher program.

PRIVATIZATION: DISCRIMINATION ALLOWED

Betsy DeVos Wants to Take Money From Poor Kids and Give it to Schools That Could Discriminate Against Them

Private schools get a big boost with the Trump/DeVos education plan. At the same time the message for public schools is, "Let them eat cake."

...the real priority of this administration isn’t pragmatic; it’s ideological – and it’s a particularly ugly ideology our federal government has historically been focused on dismantling.

More specifically, Trump’s education budget cuts $9.2 billion (13.5 percent) of federal outlays to public schools, and eliminates or phases-out twenty-two programs.

Both Republicans and Democrats expressed concerns with cuts in federal support for afterschool programs, Special Olympics, arts education, gifted and talented students, teacher training, class size reduction, career and technical education, and programs targeted at helping disadvantaged students and veterans successfully complete high school and enter higher education.

TARGETING THE NEEDIEST

10 Serious Issues Facing Public School Students: Where’s Betsy?

DeVos couldn't seem to care any less about serious problems facing America's school children. Problems like poverty and segregation simply don't matter. In fact, the cuts in the proposed budget seem designed to target the most needy children in our schools...the poor, special education, and students who don't speak English.

Betsy DeVos wastes precious time on her choice initiative, ignoring the most serious problems facing our young people in public schools. At a hearing the other day, she pushed many of these problems onto the states.

But I would argue that these difficulties still require thoughtful attention and research from an education secretary who should be engaged.

Instead of working to find solutions to such problems, she’s too busy planning how to destroy public education with her unproven choice ideology.

Children in crisis need help now! They can’t wait.

Is There a Point to All This Cruelty?

Betsy DeVos does not know anything about public education except that she doesn't believe in it as a concept. Free public education is one of the unquestioned triumphs of the American experiment, but it's a disposable commodity to a know-nothing fanatic who married into a vast fortune and dedicated a lot of it to wrecking public education.

THE PROBLEM WITH CHURCH-STATE ENTANGLEMENT

Annie Waldman: Betsy DeVos on Creationism and Intelligent Design

Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been a watchdog for the constitutional separation of church and State since 1947. As such, they understand that "school choice" was a tool originally utilized to support racial segregation. That hasn't changed. "School choice" programs in America are contributing to the increase in segregation. One might even think that was (one of) the goals from the beginning.

Americans United has also been on watch to prevent the entanglement of churches with the state. They have worked tirelessly to keep religious practices and content out of public schools. Betsy DeVos has a history of supporting the entanglement of church and state...as well as her obvious preference for parochial education.

[Full disclosure: I have been a member of Americans United for more than three decades.]

“DeVos and her family have poured millions of dollars into groups that champion intelligent design, the doctrine that the complexity of biological life can best be explained by the existence of a creator rather than by Darwinian evolution. Within this movement, “critical thinking” has become a code phrase to justify teaching of intelligent design.

“Candi Cushman, a policy analyst for the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, described DeVos’ nomination as a positive development for communities that want to include intelligent design in their school curricula. Both the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation and Betsy DeVos’ mother’s foundation have donated to Focus on the Family, which has promoted intelligent design.

...from Think Progress

How the House GOP budget would hurt kids

House Republicans have touted their budget as a prescription for economic growth that will return the United States economy to prosperity. In reality, as ThinkProgress has documented, the GOP budget slashes social spending on programs that protect the most vulnerable while giving more than $3 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest among us — and even after all that, it not only fails to reduce the national debt but actually adds to it.

More than 60 percent of the spending cuts in the GOP budget would come from programs that benefit the poor, including food assistance, Women, Infant, and Children programs, and potentially even tax credits that have huge effects on poverty and hunger. Those cuts would undoubtedly not only hurt adults in struggling families, but harm children as well. According to a new report from the Half In Ten project at the Center for American Progress, millions of children will lose assistance from a number of services, as the following infographic shows:

As Half In Ten’s Melissa Boteach noted yesterday, the GOP budget would also boot nearly 280,000 children from school lunch programs, even while protecting a massive tax break for multimillionaires.

Under the guise of creating economic prosperity, Republicans have pursued a tax-and-cut ideology with reckless abandon over the last two years, taking the axe to vital social safety net programs while also cutting tax rates on the wealthy. The casualties of the Republican agenda, however, are not numbers on a chart — they are poor kids who are struggling to survive.

When are we going to hold legislators accountable for the damage they do to children? The people who are proposing these cuts for poor Americans are the same people who blame public schools, teachers and unions for low achievement. A child poverty rate of over 20% is high enough. It's time to change directions!

Have you been reading about Chester Upland School District in Pennsylvania? They're out of money...teachers (and other employees) are working for free. The state has finally agreed to cough up another month's worth of money...but it won't last past the end of January.

Did you know that the district is in a high poverty area? Did you know that the district has to give away more than $36 million of its budget to the local charter schools? Did you know that the owner of the largest local charter donated $300,000 to the governor's campaign?

This is from Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA...

Today, about 45 percent of the district's total education budget goes to two charter schools, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The larger of those two schools was founded by Gov. Corbett's top political contributor in his 2010 election, who also has received an undisclosed amount of money to manage the school.

The events at Chester Upland School District are the result of a series of events which are being replicated all over the country. The process goes something like this...

• Republican governors and legislatures cut public education budgets, increase budgets for charter schools and push for private school vouchers. Less and less money is available to public schools (Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Idaho...etc.).
• Schools serving high poverty communities, whose scant resources are reduced further by these budget cuts and shifting of taxpayer money, struggle to overcome the effects of poverty. There is a direct correlation between income and achievement and out of school factors are rarely mentioned.
• The same governors and legislatures hurt teachers by reducing their power to make educational choices, increasing the importance of standardized tests, and using standardized tests for evaluations and merit pay (neither of which has been shown to be effective in increasing student achievement).
• The lack of resources further exacerbates the low achievement of poor students and their schools are blamed resulting in state takeovers, labels of "failing schools", and imposition of charter schools (which have not been shown to improve student achievement).
• The Democratic administration in the federal government adds to the problem by encouraging states to adopt test based teacher evaluations and increase the number of charter schools (again, neither of which has been shown to be effective in increasing student achievement).
• Public schools have less and less money to do the job they need to do. Schools are closed. Teachers are laid off (and in many cases, replaced with lower cost, untrained people. See HERE).
• As higher and higher standards of achievement are required by No Child Left Behind, and more and more restrictions are placed on schools by Race to the Top, the number of schools "failing" increases.
• More money gets drained from public schools...taxpayer money goes to privately run companies with no public accountability or oversight.

Eventually the school system can't handle the financial and political stress. The plight of Chester Upland School District is the logical conclusion. It won't be the last public school system to be threatened with destruction. We in the United States are in the process of dismantling our public schools. This is just the beginning.

Tim Slekar, an associate professor of education at Penn State, wrote,

...[It's] a nasty campaign designed to dismantle the American public school system. Corbett is no different than Walker, Christie, Scott, and all the other Republican governors that were elected in 2010. Look deeper into each of these governors' campaign contributions. They all have money from private interests that want the public school system in this country dismantled. Why?

...to cover up the real problem faced by children in American public schools -- poverty. In fact, once you control (compare apples to apples) for poverty, American students score as well as or even better than their international peers.

...The battle between Chester Upland School District and Gov. Corbett is just a glimpse into the strategic dismantling taking place across the entirety of the American public school system.

You might also be interested in...

Chester Upland teacher: Who is going to help our schools?

“My heart bleeds for these kids. Many of these students have seen so much tragedy, loss, and rejection in 16 years than most will see in a lifetime. Now, when faced with the possibility of their schools closing they are hit yet again. In discussions between students regarding the possibility of being sent to other districts, a common response from students is, “They won’t do that; nobody wants us.” Heartbreaking

“What will be done? We cannot pass this on to neighboring districts. Everyone has undergone cuts. Class sizes are up everywhere. Moving kids creates more overcrowding and all associated concerns. Moving kids fixes nothing. Moving kids holds no one accountable. I agree with your assessment - hold everyone accountable and fix this problem.

"This is about the kids. Their education and welfare must be everyone’s goal. Without that, Chester-Upland is just the tip of a very large iceburg. An iceberg that might sink public education.”

The sad story of Chester Upland

Is there a teacher in this country who didn’t wince when they read the story last week of the Chester Upland school district in Pennsylvania. The District is broke, the governor refused help and the union teachers agreed to work for free.

Did I mention that Chester Upland mainly serves poor and working class kids?

I couldn’t bring myself to Tweet or post about it. My emotions went from anger to sadness. From pity to fury.

Of course, the teachers of Chester Upland are heroic.

But it makes you wonder. Is this what they have planned for all of us?

Earlier this year I reported on a superintendent from Michigan who wrote to his governor asking that his school be reclassified as a prison so his students could receive the same benefits that prisoners get including health care, meals, etc. Now a law firm in Michigan has created a graphic detailing the difference in cost between students and prisoners.



[Source: Buckfire & Buckfire | Michigan Personal Injury Lawyers]

How would it help to spend more money on education? Watch this very short video I posted last August.



How much more is spent on prisoners than students in your state? How much money could our states save in reduced prison costs by spending more on education?

You might also be interested in some articles dealing with the way education affects incarceration rates.

Early Childhood Education Prevents Future Crime

A study of Chicago’s Child-Parent Centers revealed that children who did not participate in their quality preschool programs were 70% more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by the age of 18.2 Researchers concluded that these programs could prevent up to 33,000 crimes by the time children participating enter into adulthood. This study showed that quality early childhood education programs could cut crime among juveniles by one-third.

Early education prevents incarceration —peer-reviewed research

In the study published June 9 in the journal Science, Reynolds and Temple...report on more than 1,400 individuals whose well-being has been tracked for as much as 25 years. Those who had participated in an early childhood program beginning at age 3 showed higher levels of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, job skills, and health insurance coverage as well as lower rates of substance abuse, felony arrest, and incarceration than those who received the usual early childhood services.

Fewer dropouts could cut crime, save money

...the conclusion of the California Dropout Research Project, which said a 50 percent reduction in dropouts statewide could save $12 billion and prevent nearly 15,000 criminal acts. 

The study, released Thursday, calculated the societal and economic costs associated with dropouts in 17 cities statewide, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. 

The research assumes that about half of those who drop out each year from middle and high schools - an estimated 1,261 in San Francisco during the 2006-07 school year - would eventually graduate.

Valerie Strauss lists the effect on public education if the congressional supercommittee fails in its task to reach a compromise on lowering the deficit.

How education fares if debt supercommittee fails

There are new reports that the supercommittee is getting ready to admit that its Republican and Democratic members couldn’t compromise after several months of negotiations — this after Congress itself couldn’t reach an agreement.

Legislators should be mighty proud of the terrific lesson they are giving school children everywhere on the subject of democratic government — which can only function with compromise.

Naturally some legislators would prefer to see school budgets cut resulting in the loss of essential programs for millions of children and costing hundreds of thousands of education jobs rather than tax the wealthy at the same rate as the rest of us because they're the "job creators." (Which reminds me...how are they doing on that job creation, thing, anyway?)

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also had some words about this...

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Deficit caused by wars, tax breaks and Wall Street 

“...the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars — unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That’s wrong.”

It's wrong. It's selfish. It's shameful.