When Betsy DeVos spoke in Indianapolis, she took aim at critics of her desire to turn public dollars over to a free market of private and religious schools. The critics, she said, have “chilled creativity.” Education secretary: School choice opponents have ‘chilled creativity’ – CNN https://apple.news/A834kMwEdTieEqmzkXofF1Q If anyone knows of any creativity that has emanated from religious schoo
Our 2018 budget makes a historic investment in America's students. pic.twitter.com/FrTi1zNDFg — Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVosED) May 23, 2017 Christian school @ BetsyDeVosED is visiting in her #trumpbudget ad doesn't
Jennifer Berkshire reviews here the recent uproar created by Mystic Valley Regional Charter School’s policy of banning certain black hair styles. This is known as #braidgate. The charter has many problems. It does not listen to its
Arthur Camins, writing at the Huffington Post,analyzes the Trump-DeVos education budget and declares it to be “cruel and unusual punishment,” targeted to harm the nation’s neediest children. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_59243736e4b07617ae4cbf7f He writes: “President Trump’s budget proposal violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The crime it p
Charles P. Pierce blogs regularly for Esquire, and he is one of the few mainstream writers who understands the creeping (now galloping) privatization of public education and knows that it is a very bad thing for our society. You will enjoy reading this post, unless you are Betsy DeVos. With the proposed budget cuts to the federal budget for education, he writes, DeVos is finding ways to fulfill h
Politico Morning Education has an advance copy of DeVos’ testimony. She will defend the administration’s draconian budget cuts by asserting that choice is the only “reform” that matters. EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DEVOS TO FACE LAWMAKERS: DeVos is back on Capitol Hill today to testify for the first time since her contentious confirmation hearing. She could take some hostile questions before a Hous
The Arizona Republic conducted an analysis to learn which students were using vouchers. Remember that vouchers are supposed to “save poor kids from failing schools.” But that is not what is happening in Arizona! As Arizona’s school-voucher program has expanded rapidly in the past year, students using taxpayer aid to transfer from public to private schools are abandoning higher-performing district
Winning an Assembly seat in one state is not the biggest deal in the nation. There are key Congressional races in Montana and Georgia in the next few days. Rob Quist is running for Montana’s only House seat, and Jon Ossoff is running to capture the seat once held by Newt Gingrich and Tom Price. I have sent money to both. Flipping the House in 2018 is crucial to stopping Trump’s cruel and counterp
You may recall reading a story recently about Jared Kushner’s sister soliciting investments in Kushner real estate deals at a meeting in Beijing, where she promised that investors of at least $500,000 would get a green card in exchange. Investing in charter school construction is another way in which the EB-5 visas are up for grabs. This story from South Carolina demonstrates how foreign investor
Christine Pellegrino, teacher and opt out leader, won a seat tonight in the New York State Assembly. She flipped a seat that had been held by a Republican in a district on Long Island that went for Trump. Congratulations, Christine!
Bob Braun, veteran New Jersey reporter, just tweeted: “BREAKING NEWS–Newark public school students have seized the offices of the Newark School Charter Fund and are staging a sit-in.” Newark students are amazing. Eight of them staged a sit-in in Superintendent Cami Anderson’s office for four days in February 2015, vowing to stay until she quit. People from across the nation sent pizzas to them. I
This story about Jared Kushner’s real estate empire will appear on Sunday in the New York Times Magazine. It is a very disturbing narrative about Jared’s vast number of rental apartments in suburban Baltimore and New Jersey. His company is relentless in pursuing tenants who move out before their lease expires. They take them to court, clean out their bank accounts, garnish their wages. Meanwhile,
If you are a BadAss Teacher, or if you want to be one, or if you want to learn about their activities, you will not want their fourth annual conference in Seattle this summer. BATs will be heading into summer with their 4th Annual Education Conference in Seattle, Washington at The Seattle Labor Temple. Titled Back to School With BATs the conference, to be held on 7/22, will focus on Whole Child E
The Washington Post reports from a town in the Louisiana Delta. VACHERIE, La. — At the new public charter school in this Mississippi River town, nearly all the students are African American. Parents seem unconcerned about that. They just hope their children will get a better education. “I wanted my girls to soar higher,” said Alfreda Cooper, who is black and has two daughters at Greater Grace Cha
I wrote this article for The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/142364/dont-like-betsy-devos-blame-democrats It explains how Democrats set the stage for DeVos’ anything-goes approach to school choice by their advocacy of charter schools. Charters are the gateway to vouchers. We have seen many groups like Democrats for Education Reform try to draw a sharp distinction between charters an
One of the most heartening developments in recent years is the awakening of major newspapers in Ohio to the massive scandals surrounding their state’s charter industry. These scandals have come about because of the money nexus that connects charter operators and politicians. Charters in Ohio have a dismal academic record, and also a dismal financial record. This happens because the laws were writ
To those of us who have been around education for a while, we know that Howard Gardner of Harvard University was first to write about the idea of multiple intelligences. This has been the guiding idea of much of his work, recognizing that some young people are gifted in one area, but not in all areas. All of these intelligences are worthy and should be cultivated. His seminal book, Frames of Mind
Bruce Baker at Rutgers University created a valuable graph that shows the relationship between every states’ number of charter schools and its fiscal effort. Some states appear to think that opening charters relieves them of their responsibility to fund public schools. They choose to “reform” by handing schools off to private entrepreneurs, thus relieving the state of the duty to provide adequate
Pastors for Texas Children reports on the voucher battle in Texas. Vouchers were defeated overwhelmingly in the Republican-controlled House a few weeks back, but like a zombie, they have risen from the dead at the insistence of voucher
