What Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Betsy DeVos Won't Tell You About 'School Choice' | American Civil Liberties Union

What Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Betsy DeVos Won't Tell You About 'School Choice' | American Civil Liberties Union:

What Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Betsy DeVos Won't Tell You About 'School Choice'

Indiana has one of the most expansive private school voucher programs in the country, courtesy of Mike Pence. During his time as governor, Pence “removed the cap on the number of students who could qualify for a voucher to a private school, increased the limits on qualifying family income, and removed [a] stipulation that the student had to try the public school first,” according to a searing analysis of the state’s school choice failures by The Washington Post yesterday.

The result?

Last year alone, Indiana taxpayers financed private school education — nearly all religious — to the tune of $146.1 million “with most of it going to families who would have sent their children to private school anyway.” Oh, and by the way, a 2017 study of Indiana students in grades 3-8 who actually did use the voucher to transfer from a public to a private school showed that the voucher program had a negative impact on students’ academic achievement.

Those are the type of important details you didn’t hear or read last week from voucher proponents who dubbed the week, “National School Choice Week.” President Trump issued an official proclamationrecognizing the “celebration,” while school choice supporters, such as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Pence, wrote op-eds and deluged social media with platitudes about empowering parents and helping children achieve the “American dream.” There’s no question that parents should feel empowered when it comes to their child’s education, or that every student should be positioned to pursue their dreams, but that is not what the “school choice” movement is really about.

Rather “school choice” is a catch-all phrase that covers a variety of efforts What Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Betsy DeVos Won't Tell You About 'School Choice' | American Civil Liberties Union:

Thousands of students of color attend public schools where no teacher looks like them | #EduColor | stltoday.com

Thousands of students of color attend public schools where no teacher looks like them | Education | stltoday.com:

Thousands of students of color attend public schools where no teacher looks like them

When Sha’Diya Tomlin began attending Kirkwood High School three years ago, a white teacher asked her: “How many kids do you have?”

The teacher had not only assumed she was a teenage mother, but she had mistaken Sha’Diya for another black student.

Sha’Diya has had only one black teacher in high school, a fact that has weighed on her and at times caused her to doubt her self-worth.

“I can’t even really articulate exactly what it is, but being in a room full of people constantly every day who look nothing like you, it’s something that wears down on your subconscious,” Sha’Diya said. “It’s harder to learn when somebody doesn’t understand you or when you feel like somebody’s not going to understand you.”

Her experience with having few diverse teachers is common for students of color in the St. Louis region. More than a quarter of public schools in eight Missouri and Illinois counties — or 179 schools — had no teachers of color last year, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of data obtained from the state education departments for Missouri and Illinois.

All told, more than 27,400 students, or 21.9 percent of black, Latino and Asian students, in the eight counties went to a school last year that had no teacher who looked like them.

“White students don’t have that problem,” Sha’Diya said. “They don’t have to think about, ‘I feel out of place here because of my skin color.’”

This mismatch in demographics mirrors a national reality. While half of students attending U.S. public schools were students of color in 2012, 82 percent of teachers were white.

Experts stress that just because a student of color has a white teacher doesn’t mean that teacher is less effective or cares less about that student.

“This is assuming teachers are equally good,” said Nicholas Papageorge, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who studies how a teacher’s race is connected to student achievement. “We’re talking about one thing that matters among many other things.”

But research also shows there are significant consequences when students lack teachers who look like them. Papageorge found in his research that black students who don’t have at least one black teacher in third through fifth grades are 29 percent more likely to drop out of school and 18 percent less likely to express interest in college.

That’s partly because white teachers are less likely to expect a student of color will be successful, research shows.

Another study by Papageorge found that white teachers are about 40 percent less Thousands of students of color attend public schools where no teacher looks like them | Education | stltoday.com: 

WHY TRUMP LIES ARE BETTER THAN THE TRUTH (A SCIENTIFIC COMPARISON)

WHY TRUMP LIES ARE BETTER THAN THE TRUTH (A SCIENTIFIC COMPARISON)

I. Credibility 
All Lies are designed to seem true. The expert liar carefully uses elements that seem probable and logical and are therefore easy to believe. On the other hand, The Truth is often illogical, wildly improbable and hard to explain.
Lies are more believable than The Truth. 

II. Reliability 
The Truth is spontaneous, accidental and unpredictable. Lies, however, can be planned in detail long in advance and are thus guaranteed to turn out as predicted. 
Lies are more dependable than The Truth. 

III. Economy 
To be The Truth, an account of a given event must be completely accurate. This requires painstaking resourcefulness, expensive research, time-consuming attention to detail, complex logistics and thoroughness. In spite of all that, some people will believe it and others will not. Lies will produce identical results without all the fuss and bother. 
Lies are simpler than Truth; Lies cost less than Truth in time, money and effort. 

IV. Value 
The Truth can be found anywhere; it belongs to anybody who finds it, absolutely free. Lies are custom-made! often by experts, and the best ones are highly polished works of art. 
Lies are worth more money than Truth. Have you ever heard of anybody
bribing a witness to tell The Truth? 

V. Respectability
A. Great fortunes have been made by selling Lies to the public. The people who sell these Lies are often grateful to the gullible consumers, so they endow libraries and universities and cultural centers.

B. Nobody ever made a fortune selling The Truth. First of all, as already stated, 
The Truth is free. The only people who will pay money for The Truth are people who are
being blackmailed-and they are only buying The Truth so they can hide it before anybody else sees it.  Lies lead to libraries and universities, while The Truth leads to black- mail. 

VI. Stability
A. Take one thousand parts Truth, add one part Lies. Result: Lies. 

B. Take one-thousandth part Lies, add one part Truth. Result: again,  Lies. 

C. Note that you can make  Lies out of The Truth, but you
can't make The Truth out of  Lies. 
Lies are stronger and last longer than The Truth. 

VII. Imagination 
In reporting The Truth, a person must research the precise facts and stick to them exactly as they occurred. The liar can report the same incident without doing any research, merely saying what ever comes to his mind and filling in "details" according to his fancy.  
Lies are more creative than Truth. 

VIII. Recognizability
People are accustomed to hearing Lies all the time. If you tell The Truth, people will think you are lying. If you convince them you are telling The Truth, they will become suspicious. Why is he suddenly telling The Truth? What's going on? 

IX. Supply and Demand 
A. In describing any given incident, only one version can possibly be The Truth, whereas the number of Lies possible is unlimited. Obviously Lies are in far greater supply than Truth. 
B. There is a great demand for Lies if they are flattering, if they build up one's hopes, if they help one escape reality or if they promise health, wealth, power or potency. Nobody is very anxious to hear The Truth. The only people who demand The Truth are those who are investigating something (lawyers, etc.)-and they only want The Truth to prove somebody is lying. 

Lies are the acceptable medium of exchange in our society. They are in good supply and the demand for them remains strong. The Truth is in extremely short supply, but even this tiny supply far exceeds the demand. Thus, in our society, Truth occupies a position identical to that of dinosaur shit. 

Conclusions:

Lies are superior to Truth in numerous ways. 
Lies are more ingenious; Lies make the world seem more pleasant; 

Lies are less embarrassing than Truth, and less frightening. Furthermore, in fields such as diplomacy, statesmanship, merchandising, advertising, public relations and bookeeping, The Truth is an out-and-out handicap. In friendship, Truth is harmful; in love, it is disastrous. 

My prediction is that The Truth will be phased out of our society, almost unnoticed, in less than a generation. It will become a curio like the two-dollar bill. Probably there will be museums where samples of The Truth will be displayed for the benefit of curious children who want to know what it was like. One can only hope that the curators of these Truth Museums will have the good taste not to fake the exhibits. 

The Truth is that The Truth has become old-fashioned. It's full of odd-shaped little nooks and crannies, like so many old fashioned things, some people find them fascinating, but most people find them a pain in the neck. For those who care, it is a wonderful feeling to hold The Truth in your possession, to keep it and cherish it, never to misuse it, then to pass it along freely to anyone who wants it, giving it to them undamaged, unpainted, un added to and unsubstracted from and every bit as glowingly alive as ever. To find all those joys in the handling of The Truth is a labor of love, but most of us in today's society have no time for such things. 

Excerpts from:

The Rape of the A*P*E* is a book by Allan Sherman, published in September 1973 by the Putnam Publishing Group,^[1] regarding sex and its historical repression and resurgence in the United States.^[2][3] The "A.P.E." on the title is a play on the words "ape" and the "American Puritan Ethic".

The book was the subject of much publicity, when it appeared, due to both its subject and author. Despite his ill health at the time, Sherman went on a two-week media tour to promote The Rape and appeared on many radio shows.^[3] He died on November 20, 1973, just two months after the book was published.

#MeTooK12 Is Giving a Much-Needed Voice to Young Victims of Sexual Harassment and Assault | Babble #MeToo #TimesUp

#MeTooK12 Is Giving a Much-Needed Voice to Young Victims of Sexual Harassment and Assault | Babble:

#METOOK12 IS GIVING A MUCH-NEEDED VOICE TO YOUNG VICTIMS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ASSAULT

“I’ve signed your death warrant,” Judge Aquilina said to former Olympic U.S. Gymnastics team doctor, Larry Nassar, when she sentenced him today to 175 years in prison for sexual abusing an astounding number of minors that were under his care. “I find that you don’t get it; that you’re a danger. That you remain a danger,” Aquilina said. She added, “I wouldn’t send my dogs out to you, sir.”

With more than 150 women and girls testifying in court about the abuse they suffered at the hands of Nassar, our nation has been left reeling at how so many children could have been abused without anyone knowing.

It’s clear that we have a problem. Yet when the hashtag #MeTooK12 started circulating the internet a few weeks ago — a spinoff of the #MeToo tag that dominated the internet last year — even I was caught off guard at how much sexual abuse is occurring in our school systems. It’s a dirty little secret permeating grades K-12 that we don’t seem to talk much about.

Esther Warkov and Joel Levin, though, are talking about it. After their high school-aged daughter was assaulted on an overnight field trip in 2012, they co-founded the nonprofit Stop Sexual Assault In Schools to raise awareness of students’ rights under Title IX — a civil rights law which states that no person in the U.S., based on sex, shall be subjected to discrimination under an educational program.

However, Levin tells Babble: “Although our message received some attention, it wasn’t being #MeTooK12 Is Giving a Much-Needed Voice to Young Victims of Sexual Harassment and Assault | Babble:

Sexual Harassment: Not In Our School #MeTooK12 #MeToo #TimesUp

Video | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools: 

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools

Educating students, families, and schools about the right to an equal education free from sexual harassment

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

Click Here To Go To The #MeTooK12 Campaign On FaceBook

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools: 

WATCH IT NOW PART 1    PART 2	SHARE IT NOW	READ ABOUT IT	TAKE ACTION

 is an innovative video for K-12 parents, middle and high school students, schools, and community organizations. It’s about gender equality in education, students’ protections under Title IX, and much more. Video Contents  Media Reports

#MeTooK12 Campaign | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools: 

Grassroots Organizations Join Forces for #WeChoose Campaign | The Chicago Defender

Grassroots Organizations Join Forces for #WeChoose Campaign | The Chicago Defender:

Grassroots Organizations Join Forces for #WeChoose Campaign

Community Activist Jitu Brown address press and media. Photo credit: M.Datcher

On Wednesday, theJourney for Justice Alliance, in partnership with a national coalition representing parents, students, educators and activists, launches the #WeChoose campaign. The campaign, demanding education equity, will combat school privatization on the heels of the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education. Earlier this year, Journey for Justice united with other national education justice networks to form the #WeChoose coalition, representing more than 8 million people. 

Triggered by the recent confirmation of DeVos, the coalition launched the #DumpDevos campaign in January, making thousands of phone calls and sending letters and faxes, forcing a history-making close vote on DeVos’ confirmation as education secretary. 

The #WeChoose campaign will build on local demand for what parents and students across the nation have clearly chosen: an end to school privatization, sustainable, highGrassroots Organizations Join Forces for #WeChoose Campaign | The Chicago Defender:

“Lord, we ain’t what we want to be. We ain’t what we ought to be. We ain’t what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain’t what we was.” Exclusive: Newly Discovered 1964 MLK Speech on Civil Rights, Segregation & Apartheid South Africa | Democracy Now! 

 Grassroots Organizations Join Forces for #WeChoose Campaign | The Chicago Defender:

Voucher schools are teaching kids what can only be described as right-wing propaganda - Salon.com

Voucher schools are teaching kids what can only be described as right-wing propaganda - Salon.com:

Voucher schools are teaching kids what can only be described as right-wing propaganda
Betsy DeVos is a relentless proponent of private religious schools. Here’s what they actually teach

The number of private schools that get taxpayer funds via school vouchers or tax credit scholarships is rising rapidly, but few states keep tabs on what these schools are actually teaching. In a recent investigation for Huffington Post, education reporter Rebecca Klein shone a light on three popular textbooks used by private religious schools. While she found materials touting creationism over evolution, or teaching that homosexuality is a sin, Klein also encountered right-wing propaganda embedded throughout these K-12 curricula.

In the latest episode of the Have You Heard podcast, AlterNet education contributor Jennifer Berkshire and co-host Jack Schneider talk to Klein about the extreme ideological teachings on offer at private religious schools, now being funded by public tax money.

The following is an edited transcript. Listen to the entire interview.

Have You Heard: You set out to try to figure out how many kids are now attending "voucher schools" — private religious schools paid for with public funds — and what those kids are being taught. What did you find out?

Rebecca Klein: I found that just over 7,000 schools around the country participated in a voucher or a tax credit program, that three quarters of the schools were religious and that about 30 percent were using a curriculum provided by either Abeka, Accelerated Christian Education or Bob Jones. In Indiana, for example, which has one of the more comprehensive voucher programs, in the last year alone, more than $16 million in taxpayer money were going to schools or scholarships that use one of these curricula. In the vast majority of states that have these programs there is zero oversight over what schools and voucher and tax credit programs are teaching. Quite literally zero.Voucher schools are teaching kids what can only be described as right-wing propaganda - Salon.com:

SSAIS raises awareness of the detrimental effects on students of DeVos Title IX guidance rescission #MeTooK12 #MeToo #TimesUp

SSAIS raises awareness of the detrimental effects on students of DeVos Title IX guidance rescission | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

SSAIS raises awareness of the detrimental effects on students of DeVos Title IX guidance rescission

In a strongly worded letter to Department of Education Secretary Betsy Devos, the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education (NCWGE) opposed “any effort by this administration to repeal, replace, or modify any of Title IX’s regulations or guidance documents” that were open for public comment.

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS.org), one of 30 national NCWGE member organizations, is spearheading awareness of the potential negative effects on K-12 students of rescinding Title IX-related guidance and any weakening of the Department’s oversight and enforcement role.

The NCWGE is a national nonprofit that educates the public about issues concerning equal rights for women and girls in education. SSAIS contributed to the recent NCWGE publication Title IX at 45: Advancing Opportunity through Equity in Education.

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#MeTooK12 Campaign

Combating Rampant Sexual Harassment and Assault

by Esther Warkov, Executive Director, SSAIS

#MeTooK12 is a social media hashtag created by the national nonprofit Stop Sexual Assault in Schools (SSAIS.org). The campaign encourages victims of sexual harassment and assault by peers or school staff to share their experiences while they attend K-12 schools. It also encourages secondary victims—the victim’s friends, family, and allies—to share how sexual harassment negatively impacts students. The hashtag spotlights the widespread sexual harassment that students experience before entering college or the workforce, and underscores the urgency of addressing this problem in early education.

SSAIS invited the NWLC, a champion of the students’ civil rights, to partner in this campaign. Their participation continues a series of collaborative efforts that began with President and CEO Fatima Goss Graves’s inaugural blog for the SSAIS website and Director of Education Neena Chaudhry’s appearance in Sexual Harassment: Not in Our School! The NWLC website recently featured SSAIS in “Why We Need Title IX to Let Her Learn: A Parent’s Perspective.”

Read more

#MeTooK12: Centering Young Students in the Fight to End Sexual Violence

by Sabrina Stevens, Senior Digital and Mobilization Manager, National Women’s Law Center

A few weeks ago, when #MeToo was first beginning to spread online, I was chatting on a friend’s Facebook wall after she wrote a piece asking whether schools should teach boys to respect girls. Seeing some skeptics already popping up in the thread, I chimed in to affirm her stance, and expand it with some observations of my own: 

Read more

From survivor to advocate: demanding change in the Portland, OR, school district

by Annabelle Schwartz

[See Annabelle’s activism online: Oregon Live, KATU-TV, Planned Parenthood video]

My name is Annabelle Schwartz, I am 18 years old, an activist, and a survivor of a peer sexual assault. It took me a long time after my initial experience to realize what had happened to me. I remember the first person I told, my boyfriend at the time, who held me as I cried in his green Toyota.  At that point I could barely comprehend what I had been through, or how it would shape me into the person I am now. All I knew when I was 15 years old was that finally telling someone was my way of admitting to myself the truth of what had happened.

Read more

We proactively address the epidemic of traumatic sexual harassment impacting our nation’s students. We provide students, K-12 schools, and organizations resources so that the right to an equal education is not compromised by sexual harassment, sexual assault, and gender discrimination.

• Prevent

• Support

• Inform

• Empower

Photo credits: “Prevent” Kyle Stokes, KPLU-FM, “Support” Southern Poverty Law Center, “Inform” Diviya Rajesh, “Empower” Lindsey Cohen, KOMO-TV. “Prevent” and “Empower” from protest supported by SSAIS.

Survivors of sexual harassment and assault may immediately call 1-800-656-HOPE to be connected to the nearest crisis or counseling center. You can also use this interactive form to find local services. See additional resources here.

This website is intended to provide users with general information and resources that may be of interest. The information is provided as a public service and is not legal advice. Read more…

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools | To educate students, families, and schools about sexual assault prevention and the right to an equal education free of sexual harassment. - https://wp.me/P6aIHy-8

Sexual Harassment Defined

See also    Get Help   Awareness Videos   K-12 Sexual Assault in the Media   Sample OCR Complaints    Share Your Story

Students and families across the country struggle with the devastating impact of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Yet in many cases, victims haven’t acknowledge that they’ve actually been sexually harassed or assaulted.

That’s because victims have come to accept sexual harassment as normal and sexual assault as their fault. It’s gotten so bad that girls at this school think that feeling uncomfortable is normal.

Everyone must recognize the many forms of sexual harassment and violence so students are protected and afforded an equal education, as guaranteed by Title IX.  The US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has published an overview of sexual harassment titled Sexual Harassment: It’s not Academic. Here is some important information:

From The National Women’s Law Center:

How to Recognize and Combat Sexual Harassment: A Primer for Students Read online orRead Here

Cyberbullying and Sexual Harassment. Read online orRead Here

Resources for Students, Parents, & Educators Read online orRead Here

From RAINN:

Sexual Harassment in the Schools Read online orRead Here

From 1 is 2 Many (US Government):

Take Action Against Abuse – For Parents Read online orRead Here

For more information see our Awareness Videos, our selected media reports, or search sexual assaults K-12 online. Many forms of sexual harassment and violence are described in the OCR investigation letter of the Richmond (CA) School District. You may contact any OCR office for additional investigation reports or questions about definitions of sexual harassment and assault.

Sexual harassment is also defined in videos made by schools. One example is Confronting Sexual Harassment Bullying. However, although this video says schools will address reported harassment, this does not always happen. If schools always addressed harassment properly, families nationwide would not need to file complaints with OCR/other agencies, or file lawsuits. For additional descriptions of daily sexual harassment and school assault, see this video by students at Berkeley High School.

Parents have contacted SSAIS describing the following types of sexual harassment and assault (the links are to sample cases in the media):

• Cases compiled by Public Justice including verdicts/settlements
• Groping and constant sexual intimidation in the hallways
• Oral rapes upon girls in schools (in soundproof music practice rooms and unsupervised areas of the school)
• Rapes behind buildings during afterschool sports practice
• Sexual harassment/violence on school busses, at middle and high schools
• Rapes at school dances or off campus followed by social media postings and retaliation for reporting
• Teacher on student sexual harassment/assaults
• Sexual assaults on overnight school fieldtrips
• Sexual assaults of boys under the guise of “hazing”
• Self-harm and suicide when sexual harassment and violence destroys a student’s life at school, among numerous other tragic reports

SSAIS raises awareness of the detrimental effects on students of DeVos Title IX guidance rescission | Stop Sexual Assault in Schools:

Stop Sexual Assault in Schools | To educate students, families, and schools about sexual assault prevention and the right to an equal education free of sexual harassment. - https://wp.me/P6aIHy-8