Betsy DeVos’ “Backpack Full of Cash” Portable Funding Flop | deutsch29

Betsy DeVos’ “Backpack Full of Cash” Portable Funding Flop | deutsch29

Betsy DeVos’ “Backpack Full of Cash” Portable Funding Flop

In 2016, Stone Lantern Films released “a film exploring the real cost of privatizating America’s public schools,” Backpack Full of Cash.

The movie’s title derives from a comment made by Center for Education Reform (CER) founder Jeanne Allen as Allen was being interviewed for the film:

Our children have a backpack full of cash, and the school should vie for the privilege of having that backpack turned over to them.

Allen was not pleased to have her quote transformed into a pro-public-school film title, responding in part,

“This movie is all about smearing us as anti-public education,” Allen said. “It’s a backpack full of hypocrisy.

 Center for Education Reform (CER) founder Jeanne Allen 

Even so, Allen’s image of each student toting “a backpack full of cash” conjures the image of market-based ed reform seeing children not as human beings but as a means of income and profit.

Perhaps US ed sec Betsy DeVos is unaware of the Backpack film and the Allen-angering origin of its title, for DeVos herself invoked the very same image in her December 12, 2019, remarks to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):

ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) represents an important step in respecting the role of education in this country. For the first time in modern history, politicians on both sides of the aisle realized federal overreach in education had failed.

ESSA affords your states and your communities more flexibility to CONTINUE READING: Betsy DeVos’ “Backpack Full of Cash” Portable Funding Flop | deutsch29