Principles To Guide The Vetting Of Betsy DeVos
THIS WEEK: Jeff Sessions Hates Special Ed … Foxx In The House … Where Teacher Turnover Is Worst … New Reality For Colleges … Charters Hijack Public Ed
TOP STORY
Principles To Guide The Vetting Of Betsy DeVos
By Jeff Bryant
“President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos for US Secretary of Education in his administration set off a firestorm of commentary on what her impact might be on furthering ‘school choice’ ventures like charter schools and vouchers that send taxpayer money to private enterprises … For years, proponents for what’s become known as ‘education reform’ have argued that policy debates can be boiled down to the singular concern of … a myopic focus on standardized test scores … But if you care what happens to your tax dollars, you should be concerned about much more than just test score comparisons among different types of schools.”
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NEWS AND VIEWS
Jeff Sessions Slammed A Law Protecting Schoolchildren With Disabilities
The Huffington Post
“Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general … in May 2000… took to the senate floor to make a lengthy speech on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, arguing that federal protections for students with disabilities was a reason U.S. public schools were failing … In the mid 1990s, Sessions fought school equality after a judge ruled on behalf of about 30 of the state’s poor school districts that sought reforms … Sessions added that such federal protections ‘may be the single most irritating problem for teachers throughout America today.’”
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Meet The Congresswoman Poised To Tear Up Obama’s Education Legacy
Politico
“Virginia Foxx … is poised to assume the leadership of the House Education and the Workforce Committee … would love to dismantle the federal Education Department … Foxx reels off a list of possible targets: The billions doled out annually under Title 1 … She wants to re-examine the role of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights … She’d like to reverse a Democratic Congress’ decision to have the Education Department, not banks, issue student loans … Civil rights groups, among others, are aghast.”
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High-Poverty Schools Often Staffed By Rotating Cast Of Substitutes
The Washington Post
“In the troubled schools that serve some of the nation’s neediest children, it is not uncommon for classrooms to churn with substitutes as teachers leave in large numbers each June, or quit midyear, and principals struggle to fill the positions. The disruption of teachers coming and going and the frequent use of substitutes with varying levels of skill and commitment effectively steal learning time from students who can least afford it … Struggling high-poverty schools are difficult to staff … Such schools often see an exodus of teachers at the end of each year, so their principals are constantly looking for new hires. They tend to employ teachers who are more inexperienced than the hires at affluent schools, and they often are not adequately trained for the intense environments they will face.
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Colleges Face A New Reality, As The Number Of High School Graduates Will Decline
The Hechinger Report
“The total number of high school graduates will decline in the next two decades, while the percentage of lower-income and nonwhite students will increase … Higher education institutions … [will] need to find new ways of educating a student body increasingly composed of people who are the first in their family to enter college. And because those students tend to have fewer financial resources, colleges may feel pressure to expend more resources to help students handle the costs of college.”
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Tar Heel Heist: How The Charter School Industry Is Hijacking Public Education
Alternet
Jeff Bryant writes, “In my travels around North Carolina – to the state’s three largest school districts – I ask school board members, legal and education experts, and charter advocates to explain how a state that doesn’t seem to adequately fund its existing public school system can afford to add a competitive new one. Complicating the matter is the presence of a rising new sector of for-profit charter schools, many coming to North Carolina from out of state. Few North Carolinians I talk to can explain how these schools make a profit. And if the schools do, it begs the question of whether it is ethical or legal for private interests to profit from education while many schools in the existing system can’t afford adequate learning materials and instructional staff. These questions are not only important to North Carolinians; they are critical to the rest of the nation. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to accelerate the growth of charters nationwide with a proposal to create a $20 billion federal block grant for states to offer families more ‘school choice.'”
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