The Schools Betsy DeVos Wants Parents To Choose

The Schools Betsy DeVos Wants Parents To Choose:

The Schools Betsy DeVos Wants Parents To Choose

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos finally found a public school she could visit where there wouldn’t be protests. It’s on a military base, safely inside the compound of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina.

As a local news outlet reports, DeVos used her appearance at Kimberly Hampton Primary, a school operated by the Department of Defense and funded by the federal government, to make her usual pitch for “school choice,” in this case, in the form of vouchers parents can use to withdraw their children from public schools and send them to private schools at taxpayer expense.

For DeVos to use this visit to a public school as an opportunity to tell parents they would do better for their kids by sending them to privately run schools suggests her leadership will continue to advocate for funding more alternative schools rather than for supporting traditional ones.

But as her administration encourages parents to leave public schools, what types of schools would she prefer parents choose instead?

Based on other schools DeVos has chosen for her itinerary, the possibilities are truly frightening.

DeVos Does CARE

After the Ft. Bragg gig, DeVo’s next stop is CARE Elementary School in Miami, Florida.

CARE is a private school, which DeVos has a well-known preference for. Also, DeVos may want to showcase the school because its name, CARE, stands for Christian Academy for Reading Excellence.

DeVos’s belief in using education as a way to “advance God’s Kingdom” is well documented.

As Kristina Rizga reports for Mother Jones, the lengthy philanthropic record DeVos and her husband have amassed over many years shows “the couple’s clearest preference is for Christian private schools.”

CARE elementary certainly fits that profile. Students at CARE, according to the school’s handbook, “Attend weekly chapel, they are taught The Schools Betsy DeVos Wants Parents To Choose:

 

NEWS AND VIEWS

Everyone Pays A Hefty Price For Segregation, Study Says

NPR

“Researchers … found that if Chicago – the fifth most racially and economically segregated city in the country – were to lower its level of segregation to the national median … it would have a profound impact … including raising the region’s gross domestic product, raising incomes, and lowering the homicide rate… Less segregation would also make Chicago and its environs more educated, with an estimated 83,000 more people who have bachelor’s degrees, bringing the region an added $90 billion in total lifetime earnings.”
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Trump’s Education Department Nixes Obama-Era Grant Program For School Diversity

The Washington Post

“President Trump’s Education Department has decided to nix an Obama-era grant program meant to help local districts devise ways to boost socioeconomic diversity within their schools … The Education Department said through a spokesman that the $12 million grant program was discontinued because it would not be a wise use of tax dollars … Research has shown that poor children who go to mixed-income schools fare better academically than poor children who go to high-poverty schools and that such integration doesn’t hurt the performance of affluent students. And yet U.S. public schools have become more segregated by race and class over the past two decades.”
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Debt Load Could Snag Students, Hurt U.S. Economy: Fed’s Dudley

Reuters

“Rising student loan debt in the United States could ultimately hurt overall home ownership and consumer spending and erode colleges’ and universities’ ability to elevate lower-income students, a top Federal Reserve policymaker said … Aggregate student loan balances $1.3 trillion at the end of last year, up 170 percent from 2006 … There are ‘potential longer-term negative implications of student debt on homeownership and other types of consumer spending … Continued increases in college costs and debt burdens could inhibit higher education’s ability to serve as an important engine of upward income mobility.'”
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Bernie Sanders Just Introduced His Free College Tuition Plan

The Nation

“The College for All Act aims to eliminate tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities for students from families that make up to $125,000 per year. The bill would make community college tuition-free for all income levels. Clearly the bill will go nowhere in a Republican Congress … But [Senator Bernie] Sanders and several of the co-sponsors clearly see the bill as a valuable organizing tool … The act would have the government pay 67% of tuition subsidies at public colleges and universities, while asking state and tribal governments to pay the other third … It would be financed by a tax on Wall Street speculation.”
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4 Disturbing Facts About Preschool Suspension

Center for American Progress

“47% of the preschoolers who received suspensions or expulsions in the 2013-14 school year were African American, even though they made up only 19% of preschool enrollment. In total, nearly 7,000 3- and 4-year-olds were suspended or expelled from public preschools during the same school year … Disturbing, facts to know about preschool suspension and expulsion … It pathologizes normal child behavior … It can be driven by implicit racial bias … It’s more common in school districts that still use corporal punishment … It may be an even bigger problem in private preschools.”
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