Black congresswoman visibly annoyed as Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic civil rights questions

Black congresswoman visibly annoyed as Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic civil rights questions:

Black congresswoman visibly annoyed as Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic civil rights questions

A black congresswoman appeared visibly annoyed as she questioned Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about the DOE’s civil rights policies and was met with responses suggesting the secretary is uninformed on the rights of students.

“I am concerned about the low performance of your civil rights office” Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) noted during DeVos’ Tuesday hearing. “Could you please just state for me the mission of your civil rights office?”

“The office for civil rights is committed to protecting the civil rights as determined under the law of this land,” the education secretary responded, “and we do so proudly and with great focus each day.”

“That’s not the mission statement,” the Ohio congresswoman said. “Do you know what it is?”

DeVos said she had “not memorized” the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights mission statement, to which Fudge shook her hand and said “that’s ok,” appearing exasperated. She asked the secretary to explain her understanding of “vigorous enforcement” of civil rights in schools.

“It would be following the law and enforcing the law as stated,” DeVos responded, to which Fudge simply sighed and said “OK.”

Fudge asked the education secretary if the OCE was enforcing laws put in place with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When DeVos responded “yes, indeed,” the congresswoman pressed on — but the education secretary’s only response is that she is “confident” about it.

Watch below:

 Black congresswoman visibly annoyed as Betsy DeVos struggles to answer basic civil rights questions:

School Spending Per Pupil Increased by 3.2 Percent

School Spending Per Pupil Increased by 3.2 Percent:

School Spending Per Pupil Increased by 3.2 Percent, U.S. Census Bureau Reports

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

May 21, 2018 — The amount spent per pupil for public elementary-secondary education for all 50 states and the District of Columbia increased by 3.2 percent to $11,762 during the 2016 fiscal year, according to new tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The increase in spending in 2016 was due in part to the increase in revenue across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In 2016, public elementary-secondary education revenue, from all sources, amounted to $670.9 billion, up 4.6 percent from the prior year. This is the largest increase since 2007.

Other highlights include:

• Of the 50 states, New York ($22,366), the District of Columbia ($19,159), Connecticut ($18,958), New Jersey ($18,402) and Vermont ($17,873) spent the most per pupil in 2016. California (9.8 percent), Washington (7.4 percent), Hawaii (7.0 percent), Utah (5.8 percent) and New York (5.5 percent) saw the largest percentage increases in current spending per pupil from 2015 to 2016. To see the top 10 school districts by current spending per pupil, see the graphic Top 10 Largest School Districts by Per Pupil Current Spending.
• Within public school systems, Mississippi (14.6 percent), Arizona (13.8 percent), South Dakota (13.5 percent), New Mexico (13.5 percent) and Montana (12.4 percent) received the highest percentage of their revenues from the federal government, while public school systems in New Jersey (4.1 percent), Connecticut (4.2 percent), Massachusetts (4.4 percent), New York (5.1 percent) and Minnesota (5.3 percent) received the lowest.

These statistics come from the 2016 Annual Survey of School System Finances. Education finance data include revenues, expenditures, debt and assets (cash and security holdings) of elementary-secondary (prekindergarten through 12th grade) public school systems. Statistics cover school systems in all states and include the District of Columbia.

No news release associated with this product. Tip sheet only.

School Spending Per Pupil Increased by 3.2 Percent:

Striking teachers burst neoliberals' fantasy in one amazing moment | Thomas Frank | Opinion | The Guardian

Striking teachers burst neoliberals' fantasy in one amazing moment | Thomas Frank | Opinion | The Guardian:

Striking teachers show that cutting education to fix it is a neoliberal myth
For decades we have been told that the way to fix education is to fire people but red-shirted marchers across the country have shown the power of solidarity

What I like best about the wave of teachers’ strikes that have swept America these last few months is how they punch so brutally and so directly in the face of the number one neoliberal educational fantasy of the last decade: that all we need to do to fix public education is fire people.

Fire teachers, specifically. They need to learn fear and discipline. That’s what education “reformers” have told us for years. If only, the fantasy goes, we could slay the foot-dragging unions and the red-tape rules that keep mediocre teachers in their jobs, then things would be different. If only some nice “tech millionaires” would step in and help us fire people! If only we could get a thousand clones of Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor who fired so many people she even once fired someone on TV!

Now just look at what’s happened. We’ve seen enormous teacher protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, with more on the way. Actions that look very much like strikes by people who, in some of these states, are legally forbidden to strike. It was the perfect opportunity for education “reformers” to fire people, and fire them en masse. It was the politicians’ chance to show us what a tough-minded boss could do.

And in most cases, it was state governments that capitulated. It was hard-hearted believers in tax cuts and austerity and discipline who caved, lest they themselves get fired by voters at the next opportunity.

That, folks, is the power of solidarity, and the wave of teacher walkouts is starting to look like our generation’s chance to learn the lesson our grandparents absorbed during the strike wave of the late 1930s: that given the right conditions and the right amount of organization, working people can rally the public and make social change all by themselves. Irresistibly. Organically. From the bottom up.

There are unique circumstances that have made this amazing moment Continue reading: Striking teachers burst neoliberals' fantasy in one amazing moment | Thomas Frank | Opinion | The Guardian:

97.81% of Charter Schools not “Diverse By Design” | Cloaking Inequity

97.81% of Charter Schools not “Diverse By Design” | Cloaking Inequity:

97.81% OF CHARTER SCHOOLS NOT “DIVERSE BY DESIGN”

Charter schools are diverse by design? Holy sampling on the dependent variable Batman! All Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) teams are good because look at the top of the standings! All music is great because look at the Top 40 songs! All college professors are great (or could be) because of the top 2.19% on ratemyprofessor.com

The Century Foundation recently release a report about “Diverse-by-Design Charter Schools.” by Halley Potter and Kimberly Quick

I first met Halley Potter (far right) on MSNBC’s MHP Show

They found,

• Intentionally diverse charter schools represent a small slice of the charter sector (about 2 percent of the charter schools examined for this report)
• The inventory identifies broader trends related to diversity in the charter sector. One in five charter schools (1,026 schools) showed any consideration of diversity in their school model.
• School integration has not been a priority for the charter school sector at large. At the same time, the schools highlighted in the report show how the flexibility of the charter school model can be leveraged for diversity if designed to do so.

So, all NFL, NBA and MLB teams can be great, but they are not. All professors could be fantastic, but only 2% are? Despite all this bad news, they still conclude,

The schools highlighted in the report show how the flexibility of the charter school model can be leveraged to Continue reading: 

97.81% of Charter Schools not “Diverse By Design” | Cloaking Inequity:

Charter school backers have outspent teachers in 2 major races | 89.3 KPCC

Charter school backers have outspent teachers in 2 major races | 89.3 KPCC:

Charter school backers have outspent teachers in 2 major races

Charter school advocates are far outpacing teachers unions in spending to support candidates for California governor and state schools chief.

Wealthy donors who support charter schools and education reform have poured more than $22 million into independent committees to support former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for governor and former schools executive Marshall Tuck for state schools chief.

Big Education Ape: Bill Gates gives $44 million to influence state education reform | tbo.com - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/05/bill-gates-gives-44-million-to.html

Teachers unions have dropped about $4 million on committees to back Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom for governor and Tony Thurmond for superintendent.

All four men are Democrats who want more money for public schools. But they differ on state officials' role in improving schools and how to handle nonprofit charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded but typically run independently of the traditional public school system.Charter school backers have outspent teachers in 2 major races | 89.3 KPCC:

Big Education Ape: A few rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as California governor - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-few-rich-charter-school-supporters.html

A moral imperative: Ending poverty – Randi Weingarten – Medium

A moral imperative: Ending poverty – Randi Weingarten – Medium:
A moral imperative: Ending poverty

Fifty years since the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 43 million Americans remain in the grips of poverty and 140 million Americans are considered low-income. The number of families living on $2 per person, per day — yes, $2 per day — has grown to 1.5 million American households, including 3 million children.

Think about that: Going years without seeing a dentist. Going to school in dirty clothes. Cleaning soiled diapers in order to reuse them. Selling plasma to buy food. Never having enough food.

I don’t know if President Trump thinks about that, in between his seemingly endless self-congratulatory tweets about his stewardship of the economy. It is true that the U.S. economy has generated immense wealth over the last half-century for those at the top of the economic ladder.

Against the backdrop of soaring economic inequality, a new campaign to protest policies that keep people in poverty has been revived. The new “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” was launched last week in state capitals and Washington, D.C., to demand federal and state living wage laws, investment and equity in education, protection of the right to vote, affordable high-quality healthcare and an end to mass incarceration.

The Rev. William Barber II, the founder of the Moral Mondays movement, has mapped a path to bring about this “moral revival” that includes policy demands, voter registration and civil disobedience.

While poverty disproportionately affects people of color, numerically, there are more white Americans in poverty than any other race or ethnic group. The new Poor People’s Campaign builds on the Moral Mondays movement that mobilized across racial lines, finding the common ground of the disenfranchised. This is more important than ever, given the rising polarization in the age of Trump.

The United Nations recently conducted a report that revealed a bleak picture of the extreme poverty in the United States, documenting the terrible circumstances endured by the poor — from unsafe sewage and sanitary conditions, to chronic homelessness, to criminalization and harassment just for being poor. The report concluded that, particularly in a rich country like the United States, “the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power,” and that “with political will, it could be readily eliminated.”

Compare the political choices made by President Lyndon Johnson, whose War on Poverty enacted anti-poverty, health, education and employment policies and civil rights legislation, with the policies promoted by President Trump. Take the recent GOP tax bill, which is the biggest transfer of wealth to the rich in decades. The wealthiest 1 percent receives 83 percent of the benefits. The tax plan will increase the deficit to nearly $1 trillion in fiscal 2019, and the GOP is already using the skyrocketing deficit as an excuse to make deep cutsto Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, student aid, food and housing assistance, and other programs the neediest Americans depend on.

A recent AFT-Democracy Corps poll found that most respondents have not Continue reading: A moral imperative: Ending poverty – Randi Weingarten – Medium:

64 years after Brown: How private religious schools are taking America backwards on segregation

64 years after Brown: How private religious schools are taking America backwards on segregation:

64 years after Brown: How private religious schools are taking America backwards on segregation

Thursday marked the 64th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 1954 decision, which established legal racial segregation in America as unconstitutional.

It was also a time for reflection for civil rights attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union, which played a pivotal role in fighting the Brown case. The organization continues that fight today, as many schools regress toward being nearly as separate and unequal as they were when the Supreme Court made its 1954 ruling.

“There was a long-fought period of states and school districts fighting back against desegregation,” ACLU Racial Justice Program director Dennis Parker said in a phone interview. “We’re now in a period where a lot of our schools are becoming more segregated. You no longer have the racial explicit limitations, but you have other things that challenge explicit integration.”

These newer anti-integration elements include the maneuverings of some religious private schools and voucher programs — two of the more insidious but lesser-known institutions driving school resegregation today.

School vouchers are certificates of government funding designed for low-income K-12 students that allow them to take the government money that would have gone toward them attending a public school and use it to attend a charter or private school instead. The ACLU has routinely sued states across the U.S. for implementing voucher programs that defund public schools in favor of sending students to private ones.

“One of the sad consequences of a lot of voucher programs has been the increasing of segregation,” Parker said. “Having a voucher is not always enough to get you into a private school. It ends up being a way to give tax breaks to middle-class families to have kids go to private schools. The overall effect is public education funding is used by private and religious schools.”

t’s a problem decades in the making. White communities in the South began establishing non-Catholic Christian private schools in the 1960s to keep segregation alive after Brown forced integration. And today, the fallout is not just a Southern phenomenon. Private religious schools in the Midwest and elsewhere have high tuition rates that disproportionately poor parents of color often can’t afford to pay. As a result, these schools are nearly as segregated today as public schools were in the South during Jim Crow, according to Parker.

Elder High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, was founded as an all-male Continue Reading: 64 years after Brown: How private religious schools are taking America backwards on segregation: 

Cash Incentives for Charter School Recruitment: Unethical Bribe or Shrewd Marketing Technique?

Cash Incentives for Charter School Recruitment: Unethical Bribe or Shrewd Marketing Technique?:

CASH INCENTIVES FOR CHARTER SCHOOL RECRUITMENT: UNETHICAL BRIBE OR SHREWD MARKETING TECHNIQUE?

IN CASH-STRAPPED SCHOOL districts, where traditional public schools and charters compete over funds, schools face acute financial pressure to attract and retain students. In recent years, some charter schools have discreetly turned to a controversial recruitment strategy: offering low-income families cash stipends or other prizes in exchange for drawing new students into their schools.

The practice is a not-much-discussed part of the school choice debate, and it’s not well-known how widespread it is either. This is in large part because schools are typically under no obligation to report it. Critics say these incentives amount to unethical bribes targeting primarily low-income families, though defenders say they’re just shrewd marketing techniques.

The KIPP charter network is one of the largest and most prestigious charter school networks across the country. In December 2016, KIPP Adelante, a San Diego charter, sent a newsletter out to enrolled families offering substantial cash stipends to those who could help recruit new fifth graders to their school.

The promotion read:

If you know a 5th grader at another school and you get them to come to school here, you will receive a premium of $500 to offset your child’s educational expenses. In addition, the family you bring to KIPP Adelante will receive a premium of $100 (also for educational expenses) for enrolling their child here. Bring two 5th Graders to the school – get $1000! These students have to attend our school for at least 2 weeks before you can collect your premium.

A former KIPP Adelante teacher shared the newsletter with The Intercept, troubled by the ad targeting a school where 99 percent of students enrolled are children of color, and 98 percent qualify for free-and-reduced-price lunch.

That same year, the school offered a smaller cash incentive program to KIPP Adelante employees to help recruit fifth graders. The specific drive to recruit those students can be explained by the school’s unique makeup. In San Diego, elementary schools tend to go through the fifth grade, with Continued Reading; Cash Incentives for Charter School Recruitment: Unethical Bribe or Shrewd Marketing Technique?:

Betsy DeVos knows little about public education. And she doesn’t want to learn. - The Washington Post

Betsy DeVos knows little about public education. And she doesn’t want to learn. - The Washington Post:
Betsy DeVos knows little about public education. And she doesn’t want to learn.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited New York City this week. And what did she learn?

Nothing about public education, that’s for sure.

While in New York, DeVos did not visit a single public school. Not a traditional public school, and not a charter school. DeVos, however, did make time to tour a pair of private Orthodox Jewish day schools. She also made time to speak at a breakfast sponsored by two charities that promote Catholic parochial education.

Let me repeat that. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited the nation’s largest public school district, one responsible for educating 1.1 million students annually, and didn’t bother to check out even one public school.

What could she be thinking?

According to the Education Department’s own data, there are more than 50 million students attending U.S. public schools during the 2017-2018 school year. At last count, only 10 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren — about 5.7 million — attend private schools.

DeVos has made no secret of her desire to see that number increase. She is a strong supporter of charter schools and private education. And in her address to the Alfred E. Smith Foundation on Wednesday morning, she appeared to hold private religious education up as the ideal. “Parents hold the inalienable right to decide what learning environment best meets their children’s individual needs,” she said, adding:

There are many in Washington who seem to think that because of their power there, they are in a position to make decisions on behalf of parents everywhere. In that troubling scenario, the school building replaces the home, the child becomes a constituent and the state replaces the family.

Prior to her appointment, DeVos, who was basically a wealthy education hobbyist, was best known for her hostility toward traditional public schools — despite the fact neither she nor her children ever set foot in one as a student. She has ceaselessly lobbied and advocated for charter-school expansions, as well as government vouchers that would pay for private education, including at religious schools. She’s also a strong advocate of homeschooling.

While DeVos likes to wrap herself in the language of the righteous — she claimed on Wednesday morning that she is concerned about the “average” performance of U.S. students when it comes to international rankings — there is little proof that her suggested alternatives to public education will work any better.

While in some places there is evidence that children in charter schools perform better than those in traditional public schools, in other places, it’s just not so. In DeVos’ native Michigan, for example, children in the fourth and eighth grades in the state’s charter schools did worse on Continue reading: Betsy DeVos knows little about public education. And she doesn’t want to learn. - The Washington Post:

A few rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as California governor

A few rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as California governor:
A few rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as California governor

California voters have seen a barrage of sunny television ads in recent weeks touting former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's record on finances, crime and education, aired by Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor 2018.

But the group is, in fact, largely funded by a handful of wealthy charter school supporters. Together they have spent $13.7 million in less than a month to boost Villaraigosa's chances in the June 5 primary — at a time when his fundraising and poll numbers are lagging. Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, jump-started the group with a $7-million check, by far the largest donation to support any candidate in the election.

Their efforts are part of a broader proxy war among Democrats between teachers unions — longtime stalwarts of the party — and those who argue that the groups have failed low-income and minority schoolchildren.

Gary Borden, executive director of the California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, which is behind the pro-Villaraigosa independent expenditure group, said it is backing Villaraigosa for his history of challenging the status quo in education as mayor of Los Angeles. While he led the city, he tried to take over its schools and blasted the influence of the teachers union in Los Angeles.

"He didn't need to do the things he did," Borden said. "Some of this goes back historically, just to how strong Antonio has been on public education and our level of confidence that that's how he will be as governor."

His group's advocacy effort has raised more than $17.1 million from 14 donors for the Families & Teachers independent expenditure committee, according to campaign finance documents filed with the secretary of state's office. Such groups cannot legally coordinate with campaigns, but can accept unlimited donations.

After Hastings, the biggest contributors are philanthropist Eli Broad and and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who each donated $2.5 million, and hedge fund manager Bill Oberndorf, who contributed $2 million.

Oberndorf is a major donor to Republican candidates and causes, and replaced Betsy DeVos as chairman of the American Federation for Children after President Trump nominated DeVos to be his education secretary.

"I have become involved in this race to ensure that low-income and minority children in our state have the same education options most Californians already enjoy who live in a community with high-quality public schools or send their children to private schools,"  Continue reading: A few rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as California governor: