Educate Louisiana | Barriers to learning for children in poverty.

Educate Louisiana | Barriers to learning for children in poverty.:

BARRIERS TO LEARNING FOR CHILDREN IN POVERTY.

These days, the average person can spend a minimum amount of time in a classroom and recognize the effects that poverty has on children. Education reformers like to claim that accepting this fact is the same as saying that poor children can’t learn. Of course, poor children can learn. All children can learn and these claims are an injustice to the people who teach children who live in poverty.

Ed reform’s unwillingness to accept this is further illustrated in the “teacher prep” programs that are being promoted to fill the teaching positions that have been vacated because of their invalid policies. These programs have omitted even introductory level courses related to child psychology, theory of learning and cognitive development. I suppose the idea is that by not educating future teachers on these topics, they can essentially remove the claims that poverty affects a child’s performance in the classroom. They completely discount a century of research that serves as the foundation of education.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

It is an undeniable fact that children living in poverty experience barriers to learning. The inability to drive your car across a river without a bridge doesn’t mean that you are unable to drive a car anymore than being poor means that you cannot learn. It simply means you need a bridge.

In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow published “A Theory of Human Motivation” which included his revolutionary “Hierarchy of Needs.” From the lowest level to the highest, the hierarchy is as follows.

1. Physiological Needs: These include food, water, clothing, sleep, etc. This covers all of the basic physical needs for normal human function.
2. Safety Needs: This includes protection from danger,  health and well being, financial security and a safety net for personal setbacks.
3. Love/Belonging: Things such as a stable family life, a circle of friends, developing last relationship, etc.
4. Esteem: This is the general feeling of being respected. Developing a hobby and the feeling that your efforts make a contribution.
5. Self-Actualization: Recognizing one’s abilities and developing them to their fullest potential.

Maslow asserts that once the five levels of needs are filled, human beings become contributors to a functional society. In addition, he states that the fourth and fifth Educate Louisiana | Barriers to learning for children in poverty.:

Debacle: How a Charter School Failed – Capital & Main

Debacle: How a Promising Charter School Failed – Capital & Main:

Debacle: How a Promising Charter School Failed

In 2014, when teachers at Los Angeles’ Jefferson High School opened their own charter school, the Student Empowerment Academy, they hoped to bring the larger world into their classrooms. They wanted to show kids opportunities outside of their neighborhood, where academics often took a back seat to economic survival. Kids would learn science, math and social studies by solving real-world problems in teams, just as they would in the work-force, while teachers would have autonomy and genuine decision-making authority.

See Documents Related to This Story

But faculty members soon found themselves facing one real-world problem they hadn’t bargained on — a tug of war for power with administrators and board members. Conflicts reached a boiling point in 2015, with staff leaving en masse – either fired, pushed out or stressed beyond their limits. The school also ran afoul of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which oversees the city’s charter schools, for financial mismanagement and other shortcomings. With enrollment dwindling, Jefferson announced that SEA would have to move to another facility for the 2017-18 academic year. If these obstacles weren’t enough, in its last year the fledgling charter school was led by a former professional football player with no teaching background and little administrative experience, and who, along with the academy’s board of directors, would throw the academy and students under the school bus once the going got tough.

SEA was led by an ex-NFL player with no teaching background and little administrative experience.

CLICK TO TWEET

SEA’s story highlights the precarious nature of small independent charter schools, and brings to light the fact that charter boards of directors are largely independent and don’t always have to account to parents, teachers and communities for decisions that affect students. In the end, the academy’s board of directors concluded that SEA faced problems that were so intractable that the only solution was to shut it down, and last June, two weeks after classes ended for summer break, the directors voted for permanent closure.

Teachers and parents were left reeling. Parents demanded to know what happened to the public funds that created the school, and where their kids would attend classes the next year. Teachers argued that more could have been done to save the school.

Jefferson High sits in a South L.A. neighborhood where corner stores, modest homes and ramshackle apartments huddle cheek by jowl with small factories, all in the shadow of downtown’s skyline. Alumni include diplomat Ralph Bunche, the first African American Nobel laureate, choreographer Alvin Ailey, jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon and singer Etta James. About a decade ago Jefferson became notorious for massive brawls that erupted on campus. Television news reports blamed racial tensions, but more-in-depth accounts noted that nearly 4,000 kids were crammed into a school built for a third that many.

An outside contractor allegedly billed $2,000 for taking notes at four board meetings.

CLICK TO TWEET

Six years ago in response, the school created small learning communities to break down the anonymity of the giant high school. One of those initiatives was the New Tech High School for Student Empowerment Academy, a sort of school within a school. When, in 2013, administrators announced staff cuts and larger class sizes, faculty member Linda Rahardjo was one of several teachers who designed the 300-student independent charter version of SEA to carry on the work they had begun.

Rahardjo told Capital & Main the decision to go charter was an ultimately futile attempt to preserve what the faculty had originally built. The teachers who formed SEA were a closely-knit group who came to school early and stayed late to create a safe place where students could learn to study and think. “Being able to pass their classes became the in-thing,” she noted, adding that the students had begun to put brains above brawn, especially where disputes were involved. “They’d step back [from a fight] and say, ‘That’s not what we do here.’” It was a cultural shift at Jefferson.

SEA’s troubles began in earnest with a perfect storm of problems that included its coming expulsion from the Jefferson High Debacle: How a Promising Charter School Failed – Capital & Main:

Fake News For Astro Turf SFER | Richmond Confidential

Student canvassers helped elect charter friendly school board | Richmond Confidential:

Student canvassers helped elect charter friendly school board

If you’re a Richmond resident and a registered voter, chances are a Students for Education Reform Action Network (SFER AN) canvasser knocked on your door in the months leading up to the Nov. 8 elections. The group of high school and college students reached more than 30,000 residences in the city campaigning for two school board candidates, Tom Panas and Miriam Stephanie Sequeira.

SFER AN and its parent organization, Students for Education Reform (SFER), present themselves as student-run, grassroots groups that advocate for change and improvement in local public education systems. But leaders in both organizations have charter school connections that appear to influence the groups’ activities, from educating eligible voters to endorsing candidates.

In fact, this election cycle, SFER AN-endorsed candidate Panas won a seat on the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) Board of Education, adding a third charter-linked board member to the five-seat board—thereby giving charter-supported members a majority on the board.

SFER and SFER AN executive director Alexis Morin said the student canvassers who campaigned for Panas and Sequeira “[wore] through their shoes…they are incredibly hardworking.”

Morin, who also cofounded SFER, said she founded the organization after becoming interested in disparities in the quality of public education while she was a student at Princeton.

“I knew that the quality of education that my friends and I received was not equal,” Morin said. “It seemed to me that the quality of our schools ha[s] so much bearing on whether a young person can follow their dreams.”

Morin started SFER as a Princeton student group in 2009, to raise awareness about inequality in public education and empower people to make a difference, she said.

In its first year, the group hosted movie screenings and study breaks, and student members visited high-performing charter schools in underserved areas in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.—including schools that were part of the Uncommon Schools and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) public charter school networks.

The organization’s membership grew quickly, and in 2011, Morin and cofounder Catharine Bellinger, a fellow Princeton student, launched SFER as a nonprofit organization. In 2013, the two founded SFER AN, the 501(c)(4) political arm of SFER.

“We definitely recognized that your ability to change a policy is affected by the leaders in charge of the system,” said Morin. The 501(c)(4) organization allowed SFER’s work to expand into the realm of politics and campaigns through SFER AN.

Morin said both organizations adhere to a common set of principles, including setting high standards for students and providing support to meet those standards; supporting quality teachers; creating schools that serve the needs of every student; ensuring justice in schools; and providing access to a variety of school choices for parents and students.

But SFER’s main objective, said Morin, is “to identify and train student leaders to be effective community organizers who can then go and fight for educational justice in their own communities.”

In the months leading up to this year’s election, SFER AN operated five local chapters in four states: California, Colorado, Minnesota and North Carolina.

Many of the students involved in Richmond’s SFER AN chapter and chapters at nearby colleges, including UC Berkeley and UC Davis, grew up in or near Richmond and graduated from WCCUSD traditional public schools and public charter schools.

This fall, SFER “fellows,” as they are called, spent several hours each evening canvassing in Richmond and delivering leaflets for the Panas and Sequeira campaigns. SFER AN considers students’ participation a “fellowship,” and students in the fellowship, which begins over summer, received stipends ranging from $3,760 to $4,680, depending on the hours they worked.

Providing a stipend is necessary, Morin said, because some students must choose between a job and joining SFER AN.

Panas and Sequeira were the only two candidates to receive support from charter-linked organizations in the seven-candidate school board race. Both received backing from the local Education Matters PAC and the Parent Teacher Alliance Sponsored by the California Charter Student canvassers helped elect charter friendly school board | Richmond Confidential:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: If teacher unions are the problem, why are wealthy suburban parents trying to clout their kids into CPS?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: If teacher unions are the problem, why are wealthy suburban parents trying to clout their kids into CPS?:

 If teacher unions are the problem, why are wealthy suburban parents trying to clout their kids into CPS?

Rauner wasn't the first or last to game the system.

QUESTION... If Chicago Public Schools are so awful -- the fault of the teachers union of course --why are so many wealthy suburbanites trying to get their kids into CPS/CTU schools through the back door?

Yes, we all know how our billionaire Gov. Rauner did it back in '08 when he made his now-famous phone call to then-CEO Arne Duncan. 

From Greg Hinz at Crain's:

Mr. Rauner changed his voting residence from Winnetka, where his wife continued to live, to a condominium on East Randolph Street. I kept asking why, not content with the answer I got back that the Rauners just were getting more active in the city.

As it turns out, in establishing residence in the city, Mr. Rauner also established the right of his daughter to attend a Chicago public school. But not just any school. She could have gone to New Trier, since mom still lived in Winnetka and New Trier is pretty highly rated itself. But Payton is rated better.

There only was one problem, the sources say: Her test scores, academic record and other factors weren't good enough to get her into Payton...Her application was denied. So dad called Mr. Duncan, a Duncan aide called the Payton principal and she was admitted. 

IG Tom Sullivan claimed he investigated but never released his report. Something aboutMike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: If teacher unions are the problem, why are wealthy suburban parents trying to clout their kids into CPS?: 

Edujournalism and the Continuing Adventures in Post-Truth: Technology Edition | the becoming radical

Edujournalism and the Continuing Adventures in Post-Truth: Technology Edition | the becoming radical:

Edujournalism and the Continuing Adventures in Post-Truth: Technology Edition

Mainstream America appears, as usual, to be a bit behind the times, but in Trumplandia, there is a sort of shallow postmodernism going on (although postmodernism has been supplanted by post-postmodernism and a slew of other -isms since its heyday).

The media is, in fact, nearly consumed with a meta-analysis of itself as almost everyone has now confronted that the U.S. is a post-truth nation.

The handwringing is mostly shallow, mired in the false claims that post-truth is something new (the U.S. has always been post-truth) and that there are some fringe faux-news outlets (spurred by the evils of Social Media) that are spoiling the game for mainstream media (which ignores that mainstream media are just as complicit in post-truth as the extremes).

A subset of the failures of mainstream media is edujournalism, trapped in a both-sides mentality that masks its essential nature as press-release journalism.

Think tanks and entrepreneurs feed edujournalism, and edujournalism simply passes on the propaganda.

In post-truth Trumplandia, then, we now are confronted with what passes as credible edujournalism, an Orwellian formula that defies logic:

Earlier this week, Khan Academy, the College Board, and Turnitin released tools to give all students the chance to practice for the SAT without having to drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get the kind of relevant practice required. The companies have combined their technology tools to bring free Official SAT Practice to Khan Academy with added writing instructional tools provided by Turnitin. Read more details about the news here on The Tech Edvocate.

That’s right three discredited organizations—Khan Academy, the College Board/SAT, and Turnitin—have combined, according to Education Week to create equity because:

I’ve long been an outspoken advocate of technology tools for education. Technology can break down barriers, bring new materials and relevancy to instruction. It can excite students with its interactivity. It can help the teacher cut down on busy work and get right to the act of teaching and guiding students. And as in this case, technology–pretty exciting technology– is leveling the playing field for every student willing to invest their time in preparing for the SAT.

The basis for these grand, but false, promises is what can fairly be called post-truth—all belief not grounded in credible evidence.

Technology has been idealized for decades in education and has never fulfilled the educational promises, but has filled the coffers of technology commerce.Edujournalism and the Continuing Adventures in Post-Truth: Technology Edition | the becoming radical:

North Carolina Power Grab, Day 2: Arrests and Lawsuit Threats - The Atlantic

North Carolina Power Grab, Day 2: Arrests and Lawsuit Threats - The Atlantic:

Republicans Forge Ahead With Their North Carolina Power Grab
As GOP efforts to restrain gubernatorial power rolled forward, Governor-elect Roy Cooper, a Democrat, threatened to sue, and activists were arrested for disrupting the legislature.

DURHAM, N.C.—A Republican effort to handcuff incoming Democratic Governor Roy Cooper rolled forward on Thursday, in a day marked by somewhat acrimonious debate and fierce protests at the General Assembly in Raleigh. About 20 demonstrators as well as one journalist were arrested amid demonstrations against what liberal groups are describing as a “legislative coup.”

Cooper offered brief remarks Thursday morning, firing back at Republicans and threatening to sue over them.

“If I believe that laws passed by the legislature hurt working families and are unconstitutional, they will see me in court,” said Cooper, who is currently the state attorney general. “And they don’t have a very good track record there.”

The state senate passed a bill overhauling the state board of elections, combining it with the state ethics commission, as well as county boards of elections, by a 30-16 margin, along party lines. It’s the latest in a long-running, partially successful effort by state Republicans to rework the state’s elections system to benefit themselves. The state house passed a bill that will reduce the number of jobs appointed to the governor from 1,500 to 300, make Cabinet picks subject to state senate approval, and withdraw the governor’s ability to make appointments to University of North Carolina system boards of trustees and the state school board. (In effect, that will convert many of the political appointments made by outgoing Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, into permanent jobs.) That bill passed 70-35.

The session, complete with fervent protests, was a replay of a common scene over the last four years: Republicans in the legislature introduce a bill; Democrats argue against fiercely; a large number of protestors arrive and demonstrate; but the bills roll on with little impediment, thanks to large Republican majorities in both houses. Those majorities exist in part thanks to gerrymandered districts, some of which were so extreme that a federal court has ordered them redrawn and has shortened the terms of some legislators to a year in order to accommodate special elections in 2017.

But Republicans feel emboldened, knowing that it doesn’t matter how many hundreds of people show up to demonstrate in Raleigh, because the legislative map guarantees there’s little prospect of Democrats taking back either chamber any time soon. There is minimal pretense that the bills under consideration are anything other than an attempt to undercut Cooper. On Wednesday, the chairman of the House rules committee said they were intended to reassert legislative power, but he also admitted that they might not have happened if not for McCrory’s defeat.

It is not as if the legislature has been timid in asserting its powers, even during McCrory’s tenure. When the governor has on occasion tried to veto laws, lawmakers have been happy to override him. When he declined to call a special North Carolina Power Grab, Day 2: Arrests and Lawsuit Threats - The Atlantic:

Ed Notes Online: Norm in The Wave: The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1

Ed Notes Online: Norm in The Wave: The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1:

Norm in The Wave: The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1

The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1

By Norm Scott

Published Dec. 16, 2016

http://www.rockawave.com/node/237809?pk_campaign=Newsletter

In last week’s column (http://www.rockawave.com/news/2016-12-09/School_News/School_Scope.html)
I posted a letter from an anonymous Rockaway parent who disagreed with my stand on charter schools, vouchers, and Trump’s proposed education secretary, and school privatizer, Betsy DeVos. He feels that school choice is the answer to the problems our public school system faces. I will use the next batch of columns to try to elucidate why I oppose charter schools, vouchers, and any tax
credit for people sending their children to private and religious schools and why even a flawed public schools system is worth fighting for, while trying to fix the flaws. Balkanizing the schools and putting them under thousands of different management organizations, many of them out for a profit, will only
end up degrading all schools. (See Detroit where Betsy DeVos pushed through a system of totally unregulated schools that has lead to chaos.)

The parent contacted me through my blog and asked this
question. “Are you satisfied with the current state of public education (outside of the charter system) in NYC? If not, how would you improve the system?” Oy! This may take 10 years of columns. Let me say right up front. From almost the day I began teaching in Sept. 1967, it was clear the public school
system needed reform. By my 3^rd year I also realized that the
teacher union, the UFT, often a partner with the then Board of Education in managing the schools, also needed reform and that if we wanted change we would have to address both. By 1970 I had become an educational activist which continues to this day. What to change the system to and how to do that has been up for discussion seemingly forever.

Now that I know there is at least one person who reads this column, I will address a bunch of the issues raised in future columns. But this time I want to explore the concept of public institutions.

Pretty much every part of the nation and every neighborhood in most urban areas have had an assumption over the past 150 years or more that there will be certain guaranteed public institutions. A police and fire station (though sometimes these are volunteers). A post office. Access to a hospital. Some sanitation services. Certainly, this has been true in New York City. These
institutions were built and managed by entities that were,
theoretically at least, under the control of a public process – people elected by us who were subject to some level of accountability. Both political parties pretty much signed up to support this concept.

Theorists like conservative economist Milton Friedman and the libertarian movement opposed many of these concepts of public services run by government. The idea of a public school system was one of the first institutions to come under attack (as has the postal service). After Regan’s election in 1980, privatizing interests began to see the trillion dollars spent on Ed Notes Online: Norm in The Wave: The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1:

Teacher leaders tackle work with renewed vigor | American Federation of Teachers

Teacher leaders tackle work with renewed vigor | American Federation of Teachers:

Teacher leaders tackle work with renewed vigor

Teams of K-12 educators from locals around the nation gathered with AFT President Randi Weingarten on Dec. 10 for an online meeting about the school-related topics they'll tackle in 2016-17 as part of the AFT Teacher Leaders Program. Thirteen participating sites (representing more than 17 locals) took part in this month's webinar, and the meeting was salted with an even greater sense of urgency, thanks to a just-completed election cycle that often devolved into trust-eroding messages about public education and other vital institutions.

Restoring that trust is the union's first order of business and the work done by teacher leaders is central to that mission, Weingarten told the cohort. Started in 2011, the Teacher Leaders Program is jointly supported by the national AFT and participating locals as a vehicle for individual classroom educators to identify, research, and chart actions tied to the challenges and opportunities that unfold in schools and communities every day.

The AFT is a crossroads of labor and education, and "Donald Trump used language of frustration and grievance" to connect to voters and "undermined every institution in America" in the process, Weingarten said. But efforts like the Teacher Leaders Program give cause for hope, she added. "It shows that when we actually engage our members, we get connected in broader and broader concentric circles. We build trust and agency" in core social institutions.

Over the years, teacher leaders have looked at everything from federal law to school discipline policies and use of data through the lens of the frontline. Through self-designed action projects, they have crafted and disseminated research and practices that have found their way into real policy—new approaches aimed at strong, safe and outstanding schools in thriving neighborhoods and communities. Joining the December call were affiliates in Albuquerque, N.M.; Baltimore; Boston; Corpus Christi, Texas; Houston; Jefferson Parish, La.; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; New York City; North Syracuse, N.Y.; Pittsburgh; Toledo, Ohio; Volusia, Fla; and Washington, D.C.

The topics they've selected for work cover the spectrum of school life: how music education supports social and emotional learning; the effect of recess on student behavior and academic achievement; mental health and discipline; professional development for cultural competencies; minority boys and suspension data; Latino students and testing; teacher retention policies; community schools; early childhood services; and alternative assessments.

Participants in the program have committed to spend one Saturday each month during the school year networking and collaborating with colleagues in their union on these action research projects, as well as brainstorming plans to build community support for their schools around the ideas and information they've unearthed. It's work that typically attracts wide public recognition—and has led to locally and regionally sanctioned changes in practice.

For the profession to be at the front of this curve is the very definition of trust-building work, Weingarten stressed. And that's the climate our union has pledged to instill—the environment that actually produced victories this year for schools, students, families and educators in a host of down-ballot elections from Massachusetts to California. "What we have to focus on now is 'what next,'" the AFT president reminded the cohort. The Teacher Leaders Program can provide many of those answers.

[Mike Rose]

- See more at: http://www.aft.org/news/teacher-leaders-tackle-work-renewed-vigor#sthash.4nkVs7dR.dpuf

Notice - Important Community Conversation Session on January 9, 2017 - Wait What?

Notice - Important Community Conversation Session on January 9, 2017 - Wait What?:

Notice – Important Community Conversation Session on January 9, 2017

Education advocates are invited to attend an important and free Community Conversation on EARLY LEARNING SUCCESS THROUGH COLLABORATION

The event will take place on January 9, 2017
8:15 A.M. – 4:30 P.M. 
SHERATON HARTFORD SOUTH, ROCKY HILL

Presenters Include:

CONNECTICUT VOICES FOR CHILDREN

THE ZIGLER CENTER AT YALE CONNECTICUT

CENTER FOR THE NEW ECONOMY

CONNECTICUT PARENT POWER

CONNECTICUT FAMILY RESOURCE CENTER ALLIANCE

And the CONNECTICUT COMMISSION ON CHILDREN

Program Background:

Parents, advocates, educators, and providers who help children develop into active learners can face daunting challenges, especially in an environment of dwindling resources. This free forum will showcase success stories that exemplify how community engagement, collaboration, and innovation can be harnessed to develop our youngest children into our strongest students. The forum will focus on practices that are working well and new strategies to address the unmet needs of families with young children.

The agenda includes:

• Plenary Round Tables with Parents, Community Leaders, and Practitioners: Opportunities and challenges—what children need to start every day ready to learn.

• Deeper Dive Breakout Sessions: Strategies to address early learning, early reading success, 21st century community schools, implicit bias, positive student behavior development, and other critical topics.

• Plenary Lunch “Ed Talk:” Successes in community collaboration featuring Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and the Director of the Doctorate in Educational Leadership at California State Sacramento, California NAACP Education Chair.

• Town Hall Panel Discussion: Audience Q&A. What was learned? What are some next steps?

For more details, visit www.teacher-policy-institute.org.

THIS FREE FORUM IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.  TO REGISTER, VISIT WWW.REGONLINE.COM/ COMMUNITYCONVERSATIONS

Recent Important Coverage of Betsy DeVos, Part 2 | janresseger

Recent Important Coverage of Betsy DeVos, Part 2 | janresseger:

Recent Important Coverage of Betsy DeVos, Part 2

After today, this blog will begin a two-week holiday break. Look for a new post on Tuesday, January 3, 2017.  Good wishes for the holidays!

Here is the second half of a two-part post—yesterday and today—to summarize recent news coverage about Betsy DeVos

You may feel you already know enough about Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education. You may be disgusted that a one-cause activist and philanthropist has been appointed for an important federal position that oversees, for example, civil rights protection for children across America’s public schools, especially as her one cause has been the expansion of school vouchers—public dollars children can carry to private and parochial schools. Maybe you’ve already learned enough to be furious that yet another billionaire from the One Percent will be shaping federal policy for the schools that serve the 99 Percent. Maybe you are angry about DeVos’s lack of experience in education—and especially the schools operated by and for the public. Betsy DeVos graduated from Holland Christian High School and, as columnist Wendy Lecker has explained: “(S)he is wholly unqualified to be Secretary of Education. She has no education degree or background, and has never worked in, attended or sent her children to public school.”

But this two-part blog will help fill in any gaps in your understanding.  During DeVos’s confirmation hearing, and later, if she is confirmed and as her policy proposals roll out, you’ll have the facts at your fingertips as contributions to any and every conversation.  News reporting on DeVos this week has been particularly interesting, as newspapers have been assigning reporters to investigate in depth DeVos’s advocacy to reduce regulation of marketplace school choice, the influence of her religious beliefs, her partners and allies in the sphere of school choice advocacy, and the way in which DeVos’s ideologically driven philanthropy fits right in to the work of the Waltons, the Broads, and the Gates, although DeVos is far more driven by far-right anti-government, pro-voucher ideology.

In her 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, the New York University education historian Diane Ravitch coined the term “The Billionaire Boys Club” to describe a new wave of mega-philanthropy—no longer responsive to the ideas of a range of grant seekers but instead driven by the strategies of foundation boards and staffs—and geared not simply to meeting the funding needs of supplicant nonprofits but instead to influencing the direction of policy.  In that book Ravitch warned: “Before considering the specific goals and activities of these foundations, it is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing education policy to be directed or, one might say, captured by private foundations. There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society’s wealthiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions. These foundations, no matter how worthy and high-minded, are after all, not public agencies. They are not subject to public oversight or Recent Important Coverage of Betsy DeVos, Part 2 | janresseger:

Hanna Skandera, Undersecretary of Education?? | deutsch29

Hanna Skandera, Undersecretary of Education?? | deutsch29:

Hanna Skandera, Undersecretary of Education??

According to the December 15, 2016, Politico Pro, controversial New Mexico Commissioner of Education Hanna Skandera “is under close consideration for education deputy secretary or undersecretary in the Trump administration.”

The New Mexico Senate took four years to confirm Skandera, and it was a close vote: 22-19. Skandera has never taught, an issue that arguably violates the New Mexico constitution, which requires the state’s ed secretary to be a “qualified, experienced educator.”

However, in the world of ed reform, it’s who you know, and if you can get your non-teaching foot in the door and hold it there as ed sec “designee” for years, then it is indeed possible to be tagged as an “educator” by a state senate majority.

But let’s turn our attention to Common Core.

If Trump is supposedly against Common Core, one wonders why he would choose a woman who is currently the chair for one of the two federal-fund-established Common Core testing consortia, PARCC.

Politico Pro states that Skandera “took over as head of the governing board for the PARCC test” in January 2016. However, when Skandera “took over,” PARCC decided not to announce it. It turns out that I announced it in this January 19, 2016, postwhen I realized that the PARCC website slyly changed the identity of the PARCC chair from Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester to Skandera.

Under Skandera, PARCC is in the process of having an identity crisis and trying to remake itself.

Skandera has been a member (and once head) of Jeb-Bush-created Chiefs for Change. Interestingly, her position as chair of PARCC has been excluded from the site’s bio:

It’s as though PARCC (and Skandera’s involvement in it) simply do not exist:

In December of 2010, Governor Susana Martinez nominated Hanna Skandera to lead New Mexico’s public education system of over 830 schools and more 

Hanna Skandera, Undersecretary of Education?? | deutsch29: