How DeVos Plans To Change The Department Of Education

How DeVos Plans To Change The Department Of Education:

How DeVos Plans To Change The Department Of Education

Betsy DeVos was confirmed by a 51-50 Senate vote Tuesday to run the Department of Education. Here’s how President Trump’s controversial cabinet pick plans to change the nation’s education policy:

• Relax unrealistically strict standards for secretary of education
• Modify Title IX to allow invisible hand of the market to sort out any student rape cases that may arise
• Identify at-risk students and do nothing whatsoever
• Ensure that all students, regardless of background, receive the opportunity to bask in the shining light of Christ
• Let low-income parents choose which one of their children gets to go to school
• Create emergency vocational program for cabinet members who lack proficiency and are way out of their depth
• Place power for establishing gym class floor hockey rules back in states’ hands where it belongs
• Require free- and reduced-lunch recipients to prostrate themselves before the principal at mealtimes
• Steer tax dollars away from failing, fundamentally defective public school studentsHow DeVos Plans To Change The Department Of Education:

Betsy DeVos Has Been Confirmed. Now the Fight Really Begins. | The Nation

Betsy DeVos Has Been Confirmed. Now the Fight Really Begins. | The Nation:

Betsy DeVos Has Been Confirmed. Now the Fight Really Begins.
DeVos will have significant influence over how civil-rights protections for students are enforced, and how the for-profit college and student-loan industries are regulated. 

Several years ago, billionaire Republican donor Betsy DeVos wrote that she’d “decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence.” Instead, she and her family would concede the point: “We expect a return on our investment.”

DeVos, whose family has given as much as $200 million to the Republican Party, collected her return on Tuesday, when the Senate voted—barely—to confirm her as secretary of education. With two Republican senators splitting with their party, the Senate deadlocked at 50-50, and Vice President Mike Pence had to cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of DeVos. Of the 50 senators who voted to confirm her, nearly half have received money from her or her family. (And eight, by the way, are up for reelection in 2018.)

DeVos provoked a backlash unprecedented for an education-secretary nominee. As the vote neared, Senate offices received 1.5 million calls each day opposing her, according to the Los Angeles Times. Constituents showed up to protest en masse at senators’ offices across the country, from Omahato Anchorage. The night before the vote, Democrats spoke against her on the Senate floor in a 24-hour streak. Saturday Night Live spoofed her. And while teachers unions and other public education advocates organized much of the pushback, even some charter school supporters, including her fellow billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, joined the public opposition.

There were several reasons for the outcry. DeVos was truly an exceptional nominee, having no experience in education outside of her advocacy for privatized education, which she’s acknowledged is religiously motivated. She made her own inexperience obvious in her confirmation hearing, appearing flagrantly unprepared and making a number of flubs that went viral online. (In a statement after the vote, Senator Al Franken called DeVos “the most incompetent cabinet-level appointee” he’d ever seen.) Her tangle of financial investments raised red flags for ethics watchdogs. And her unwillingness to offer even tepid support for traditional public schools put Betsy DeVos Has Been Confirmed. Now the Fight Really Begins. | The Nation:

DeVos, Obama, Booker, Trump – All Enemies Of Public Education | PopularResistance.Org

DeVos, Obama, Booker, Trump – All Enemies Of Public Education | PopularResistance.Org:

DeVos, Obama, Booker, Trump – All Enemies Of Public Education

Betsy DeVos barely won confirmation as the next secretary of education, so dreadful is the performance of the charter schools she promotes in Michigan. But the educational atrocities of the DeVos schools are inseparable from the larger war against public education. Barack Obama doubled charter school enrollment, and Cory Booker, who hopes to be president, is a fanatical advocate of private school vouchers. Trump and Devos aren’t the only villains.

“Senate hearings exposed the slimy underbelly of the charter privatization project and the billionaires of both parties that have guided and sustained it.”

Sometimes, when ruling class competitors collide, the villainy of both factions is made manifest. Donald Trump did the nation’s public schools a great service by nominating Betsy DeVos, the awesomely loathsome billionaire Amway heiress, for secretary of Education. In turning over that rock, Trump exposed the raw corruption and venality at the core of the charter school privatization juggernaut. Only an historic tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence saved DeVos from rejection by the U.S. Senate. Two Republicans abandoned their party’s nominee, joining a solid bloc of Democrats, including New Jersey’s Cory Booker, a school privatizer that crawled out of the same ideological sewer as DeVos and has long been her comrade and ally. Booker defected from his soul mate in fear that the DeVos stench might taint his own presidential ambitions.

The New York Times editorial board, a champion of charters, bemoaned that DeVos’ “appointment squanders an opportunity to advance public education research, experimentation and standards, to objectively compare traditional public school, charter school and voucher models in search of better options for public school students” – a devious way of saying that the Senate hearings exposed the slimy underbelly of the charter privatization project and the billionaires of both parties that have guided and sustained it.

“Obama deployed the coercive powers of Race to the Top to force states to increase the spread of charters schools.”

The greatest privatizer of them all, the man who broke the back of public education and more than doubled charter school enrollment through his Race to the Top program, was cavorting with Richard Branson on the British billionaire’s private Caribbean island when Betsy DeVos was on gruesome display at the Senate hearings. Obamacare will soon be history, but the First Black President’s most enduring domestic legacy was to make charter schools the effective alternative to public education — but only in Black America, and to a much lesser degree, in Latino neighborhoods. Beginning in 2010, Obama deployed the coercive powers of Race to the Top to force states to increase the spread of charters schools or lose access to $4.35 billion in additional federal funding. On Wall Street, it’s called “making a market.” In his two terms in office, President Obama succeeded in creating a privately-run network of schools that are both effectively segregated and outside democratic processes of accountability.

His first secretary of education, Arne Duncan, famously said Katrina was the best thing that DeVos, Obama, Booker, Trump – All Enemies Of Public Education | PopularResistance.Org:

UTLA Writes a Letter to Eli Broad about Betsy DeVos | Diane Ravitch's blog

UTLA Writes a Letter to Eli Broad about Betsy DeVos | Diane Ravitch's blog:

UTLA Writes a Letter to Eli Broad about Betsy DeVos

The United Teachers of Los Angeles sent this letter to billionaire Eli Broad. Broad has been a major funder of privately managed charter schools in Los Angeles, Detroit, and other districts around the nation. He currently is promoting a $450 million plan to put half of all students in Los Angeles in charter schools. He also donates large sums to candidates who advocate the replacement of public schools with charter schools.

A few days before the vote to confirm Betsy DeVos, Broad announced that he opposed her.

UTLA wrote to Eli Broad:

Dear Mr. Broad:

UTLA and public education advocates, parents, students and community members have been fighting against Betsy DeVos’ nomination as Secretary of Education months before your letter, dated Feb. 1, was sent to all US Senators, in which you asked them to vote against her confirmation, which just took place today.

You were late to that struggle. We are not surprised.

If you are, according to your letter, “a believer in high-quality public schools and strong accountability for ALL public schools, including traditional and charter,” then you can do something right now: Immediately withdraw your financial support for the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA).

CCSA is a lobbying arm of the charter school industry that has amassed more than $170 million to fight the very existence of our neighborhood public schools.

Instead of continuing to fund CCSA, you should take responsibility for the damage you have caused, through your funding, to the school systems in California, Detroit, and New Orleans. In the latter two places, you worked hand-in-hand with Betsy DeVos.

To repair the damage, send your generous donations with no strings attached to the democratically elected school boards in California, especially the Los Angeles School Board, as well as schools in New Orleans and Detroit. School boards and school communities will invest this money appropriately.

In your letter, you say you “have never met Mrs. DeVos” and you have “serious concerns about her support of unregulated charter schools and vouchers as well as the potential conflicts of interests she might bring to the job.”

Forgive us as we take a moment to put this statement in context.

Last year, as one of the largest donors to CCSA, you helped thwart common-sense legislation like SB 322, which would have protected charter school students from unfair expulsions. You, through donations to CCSA, also intensely lobbied against AB 709, an accountability and transparency bill, which would have required that charter schools comply with the same state laws governing open meetings, open records and conflict of interest that traditional public schools do.

You and DeVos teamed up to fund legislative races in Louisiana, a state that, post-Hurricane Katrina, became the poster child for unregulated charter growth and the systematic destruction of the civic institution of public education.

Since 2008, you gave $212,500 to DeVos’ lobbying organization founded and chaired by her called “Alliance for School Choice.” It is a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm that, similar to CCSA, undermines public education and pushes for expansion of unregulated charter schools and school vouchers.

You and DeVos both funded the Educational Achievement Authority in UTLA Writes a Letter to Eli Broad about Betsy DeVos | Diane Ravitch's blog:

The battle over public education is raging, but it's immoral to use students as pawns - LA Times

The battle over public education is raging, but it's immoral to use students as pawns - LA Times:

The battle over public education is raging, but it's immoral to use students as pawns

Nationally and locally, the war for control of public schools has escalated.

Betsy DeVos was confirmed as President Trump’s Education secretary Tuesday, despite having displayed a shocking lack of knowledge about public schools, and she’s a bigly billionaire champion of more school options for students and their parents.

It’s hard to argue against more options, but it’ll be interesting to see how the growth of charters impacts kids who don’t make the cut, and sad to watch their schools get left behind in the resource department. And if she pushes vouchers, it will be even more interesting to see how Americans react to having their tax dollars subsidize private schools, including religious education.

Now back to the front lines in Los Angeles.

“There’s a through line between the Betsy DeVos confirmation and what’s going on in L.A.,” UCLA education professor John Rogers said. “She and her family have used their vast wealth to manipulate the politics of Michigan education.”

In recent years, some of the wealthiest people in Los Angeles and beyond have spent millions of dollars in the hope of multiplying charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated. State spending per pupil in California ranks shamefully low against national averages, but spending on L.A. Unified school board races is astronomical.

Last week, I wrote about a $1-million donation by former Mayor Dick Riordan, the chief financial backer of a student group that has attacked school board President Steve Zimmer in a negative ad campaign. Zimmer has been a supporter of some charters in a district that has dozens of them already, but his foes in the March election are seen as safer bets to expand the number.

I think guys like Riordan, philanthropist Eli Broad, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Walton family and all the other folks who think teacher unions are the enemy of better schools, have a right to that view and a right to spend their money in ways they think will benefit children.

Just as the teacher unions and their supporters have a right to fight back, if not with pockets that are always as deep as those of the millionaires and billionaires.

For the record, I’ve had bones to pick with both sides in this intractable war, and I’ve said more than once that while the adults are banging heads, the kids tend to get thrown under the bus, if you’ll pardon the expression.

But in Los Angeles, the kids have now joined the fight, or so it seems.

The name of the group that took credit for a nasty packet of cheap-shot political mailers attacking Zimmer was LA Students for Change. One mailer falsely accused Zimmer of being the force behind L.A. Unified’s iPad debacle, among other sins. As my colleague The battle over public education is raging, but it's immoral to use students as pawns - LA Times:

Ed Notes Online: Why DeVos Vouchers May Be Dead Issue - Republican Women Senators

Ed Notes Online: Why DeVos Vouchers May Be Dead Issue - Republican Women Senators:
Why DeVos Vouchers May Be Dead Issue - Republican Women Senators

In voting against DeVos, Collins and Murkowski are remaining true to their long-standing positions on vouchers. In July 2015, both voted against student vouchers, three times.... Monkey Cage

It wasn't totally surprising that the 2 Republican defectors on DeVos were women, but they are also from rural states. A third woman, Caputo from W. Virginia was a possibility but look at one crucial reason she went for DeVos:

Capito may feel less political pressure to vote in line with the teacher’s union because West Virginia adopted a right-to-work law in 2016. Alaska and Maine do not have right-to-work laws. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a right-to-work law prohibits labor unions from mandating union membership for workers, such as K-12 teachers. Once a state adopts a right-to-work law, that state’s teacher’s unions become less powerful, as they have fewer members, a smaller budget and can’t contribute as much to political campaigns.

The WAPO Monkey Cage analysis is often right on. 

Author Mona Vakilifathi drills down in The DeVos confirmation vote suggests Trump will have a tough time passing a school voucher law

Female Republican politicians may break with their parties on “family” issues
As expected, no Democratic senator voted for any of these pro-voucher amendments. But 14 Republicans opposed at least one of the three amendments...

Five of the six female Republican senators made the list, which is consistent with what Michele Swers revealed in her research on Republican female senators: Female Republican senators are more likely than men to defect from Ed Notes Online: Why DeVos Vouchers May Be Dead Issue - Republican Women Senators:

Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 1)

*”A kindergarten teacher in Tennessee says that a Latino child asks every day, ‘Is the wall here yet?’ He was told by classmates that he will be deported and blocked from returning home by the wall proposed by presidential candidate Donald Trump.”

*A high school principal suspended a history teacher after students and parent complained that the teacher in a discussion of Nazism compared Trump to Hitler. The superintendent reinstated the teacher a day later.

* At a walkout of Latino, Asian, and African American  high school students,  protesting the election of Trump, the principal led the protestors to the school stadium and they  aired their concerns about the newly-elected President. At the end of the protest that morphed into a rally against President Trump, the principal said “F*** Trump.” The district superintendent immediately suspended the principal. Two days later, after the principal apologized for his remark to the entire school community, he returned to the school.

The divisions, fears, and epithets unleashed by the year-long primaries and the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency reverberate in mainstream and social media daily. Because schools are political (but not partisan) institutions vulnerable to the cross-currents in the larger society spilling into classrooms, it is (and was) inevitable that those fears get voiced in and out of school.

Protests over the Vietnam War in the late-1960s and early 1970s, President Nixon’s illegal activities in the Watergate break-in, pro-life and abortion rallies,  teaching the Adventures of Huck Finn in middle school, climate change, policing minority communities,  teaching evolution–to name a few–have been controversial issues that entered classrooms over the past half-century. Parents and students bring those issues into classrooms and the question of teachers airing these issues dispassionately and abiding by norms of critical thinking and impartiality, and students listening to one another arises again and again, then and now. Not a new issue at all.

But  with Donald Trump, his precedent-breaking actions and language (not to Teaching in the Trump Years (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Betsy DeVos' School Choice To-Do List | National News | US News

Betsy DeVos' School Choice To-Do List | National News | US News:

Decoding the DeVos To-Do List
The new education secretary is a champion of school choice, but may need to take a piecemeal approach to expansion.

President Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail to direct $20 billion in federal education spending to school choice policies. On Tuesday evening, he took a first step toward fulfilling that promise as Betsy DeVos, a billionaire school choice advocate, was sworn in as U.S. secretary of education.

The confirmation of the newly minted DeVos, whose nomination cleared the Senate by the slimmest of margins Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Mike Pence, effectively ushers in a new era in education policy. Officials are expected to move away from using federal funds to prod states into adopting certain education policies and toward loosening directives regarding how federal dollars are used.

Likely up first on that new agenda are efforts to expand school choice.

"I think that we might expect some things pretty quickly," says Lindsey Burke, an education policy fellow at conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. "There's a real opportunity right now to expand choice in a way that's appropriate at the federal level."

But what will those things look like?

The phrase "school choice" is an umbrella for myriad policies aimed at giving students additional options for where they go to school and how they learn. There's a big difference, for instance, between school choice policies that expand public charter schools – like some policies embraced by the Obama administration, much to the consternation of teachers unions – and school voucher programs, which use federal dollars to allow parents to help pay for tuition at private schools and are much more politically tricky.

During the campaign, Trump called for a $20 billion block grant program that would be devoted to poor students and doled out by individual states, with the funding following students should they change schools. And while Education Department officials have yet to outline any further plans, there are a handful of areas in which they could prod the Republican-controlled Congress to act immediately, in hopes of expanding school choice initiatives.

One of those is the reauthorization and expansion of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first federally funded, private school voucher program in the U.S. and one that the Obama administration curtailed during its tenure. The program provides low-income families in the nation's capital with scholarships to send their children to local participating schools.

The Obama administration sought to phase out the program, arguing it drained the coffers of traditional public schools in order to benefit a small handful of students.

"Without a doubt, [DeVos] is welcome news for the 1,100 kids currently in the program," Burke says.

Congress also could be prodded to pursue school choice policies in regard to the Bureau Betsy DeVos' School Choice To-Do List | National News | US News:

‘Students first’: New Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seeks common ground - The Washington Post

‘Students first’: New Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seeks common ground - The Washington Post:

‘Students first’: New Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seeks common ground

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday delivered her first public message since her rocky confirmation hearing, promising her new staff that she is committed to working with it to “protect, strengthen and create new world-class education opportunities for America’s students.”

DeVos pledged in a nine-minute speech to challenge the Education Department to examine its policies and practices — and to listen to her new colleagues. “Let us set aside any preconceived notions and let’s recognize that while we may have disagreements, we can — and must — come together, find common ground and put the needs of our students first.”

DeVos addressed more than 200 employees at the headquarters in Washington, with others tuning in online for what was billed as an all-hands meeting. She enters office as a polarizing figure, with supporters calling her a change agent and critics charging that she is unqualified and would undermine public schools. She was confirmed Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, with Vice President Pence casting a tiebreaking vote after senators deadlocked on her fitness for the job.

She became fodder for late-night comics — including on “Saturday Night Live” — after suggesting that she opposed a ban on guns in schools because of “potential grizzlies.”

On Wednesday, she joked about the confirmation battle, saying it had been a “bit of a bear.”

DeVos addressed more than 200 employees at the headquarters in Washington, with others tuning in online for what was billed as an all-hands meeting. She enters office as a polarizing figure, with supporters calling her a change agent and critics charging that she is unqualified and would undermine public schools. She was confirmed Tuesday by the narrowest of margins, with Vice President Pence casting a tiebreaking vote after senators deadlocked on her fitness for the job.

She became fodder for late-night comics — including on “Saturday Night Live” — after suggesting that she opposed a ban on guns in schools because of “potential grizzlies.”

On Wednesday, she joked about the confirmation battle, saying it had been a “bit of a bear.”‘Students first’: New Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seeks common ground - The Washington Post:

Senator Warren Persists

Senator Warren Persists

Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech.She had appeared to violate the rule.She was warned.She was given an explanation.Nevertheless, she persisted.– Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

DeVos’s Opponents are Definitely Not Complacent Defenders of the Status Quo | janresseger

DeVos’s Opponents are Definitely Not Complacent Defenders of the Status Quo | janresseger:

DeVos’s Opponents are Definitely Not Complacent Defenders of the Status Quo

Betsy DeVos was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday and sworn in as our new U.S. Secretary of Education. It became clear in the run up to the Senate’s closest-ever vote on a Cabinet secretary that millions of Americans value the idea of a system of universal, publicly funded schools and want to preserve public education despite the threat of privatization. Ms. DeVos’s views are very different.

In an editorial yesterday, the NY Times summarizes DeVos’s experience and her beliefs: “She has never run, taught in, attended or sent a child to an American public school, and her confirmation hearings laid bare her ignorance of education policy and scorn for public education itself.  She has donated millions to, and helped direct, groups that want to replace traditional public schools with charter schools and convert taxpayer dollars to vouchers to help parents send children to private and religious schools.”

Some of DeVos’s supporters have castigated her opponents as comfortable apologists for the status quo. Those of us who opposed DeVos will need to prove we neither fit this label nor accept the status quo. As primary civic institutions, public schools reflect the sins as well as the strengths of our society. We’ll need to demand loudly and persistently that our imperfect system be made to realize its potential for better serving the marginalized children who continue to be left behind even as we insist that public schools must do a better job serving all children’s needs and protecting their rights.

Here are just three of the important issues that slipped out of the conversation as we debated Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to serve as education secretary.  We will need to be relentless in raising these concerns.

First, we’ve been ignoring poverty. There is a primary flaw in the federal school accountability system that was created by No Child Left Behind back in 2002, and it is still with us in a slightly milder form in the Every Student Succeeds Act, passed in December of 2015.  We judge our schools these days by the huge data sets generated by annual standardized testing of all children, and we are set on punishing the schools and the school teachers in places where test scores don’t quickly rise. Yet, years’ of research show conclusively that aggregate test scores reflect the economic circumstances of families and neighborhoods far more then they reflect the quality of schools and teachers. Concentrated family poverty in a nation that is increasingly unequal and residentially segregated by income has been shown in every way to be the problem. Poverty.  Rising inequality. Rigidifying income segregation of families overlaid on racial segregation.  You are aware of these problems if you are reading books by Thomas Piketty, or reports from the Economic Policy Institute, or demographic sociology from Sean Reardon at Stanford University, but you sure don’t ever hear any politicians reflecting on these matters. Concentrated urban poverty is an issue our politicians won’t talk about, and it remains at the heart of our society’s biggest concerns for educating our children.

Second, the idea of instituting competition and rewarding success in a privatized system is grounded in a belief system that is contrary to the values by which our ancestors created a system of public education. Betsy DeVos and Mike Pence and others in the Trump administration prefer to assume we can improve our provision of education by allowing a relative few children to escape through vouchers or to charter schools. It’s a lifeboat strategy that gives a leg up to a few strivers even as it isolates the children who are expensive to educate—homeless children, recent immigrant children learning English, autistic and blind children—in the public schools required by law to serve them. This kind of thinking is DeVos’s Opponents are Definitely Not Complacent Defenders of the Status Quo | janresseger:

Russ on Reading: Next Steps in the DeVos Fight: Resist, Resist, Resist

Russ on Reading: Next Steps in the DeVos Fight: Resist, Resist, Resist:

Next Steps in the DeVos Fight: Resist, Resist, Resist

The Republican dominated Senate has confirmed the clearly unqualified Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education. We can see this inexplicable vote as just another in a long line of votes where the government has decided to put partisan politics in front of good sense and good governance. One thing is sure, Betsy DeVos’ confirmation is a bad thing for public education, parents, teachers, and children.

What might not be as apparent is that Betsy DeVos’ confirmation is also bad for corporate education reformers. Education reformers got an education reformer in the cabinet position all right, but they also got the dumbest, most clueless, education reformer in the history of education reform to represent their interests. Even worse (better?) the whole world knows it. DeVos can now prepare herself for endless social media shares of her laughable Senate hearing performance, plus continued ridicule from late night TV hosts, and the awakened anger of teachers and parents across the country. I understand that one of the new Secretary’s first official trips in her position will include a crusade against anti-education grizzlies in the public schools of Colorado. Pack your gun and Bible, Betsy.

DeVos enters office as the only presidential cabinet appointment in history to require a tie-breaking vote from the Vice-President. That scion of education reform, champion of anti-LGBT legislation, and Trump toady, Mike Pence, cast the deciding vote. I like the irony of the dumbest education reformer in America needing the vote of the second dumbest education reformer in America to take up her position. It makes me think of a title for a new movie sequel: Dumb and Dumber Go to Washington.

I have never had anything nice to say about billionaire reformer Eli Broad, but he seems to be one education reformer who sees DeVos as a danger to Russ on Reading: Next Steps in the DeVos Fight: Resist, Resist, Resist:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Remember the battle over the Marine Academy? Look what's happened since.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Remember the battle over the Marine Academy? Look what's happened since.:

Remember the battle over the Marine Academy? Look what's happened since.

Community activists like Delia Borillas, worked hard to rally neighbors against plans to turn Ames into a military academy.

Back in 2014, after the Mayor and then school CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett promised not to close any more schools, they instead pushed for their militarization. Chicago had already led the nation in publicly financed military academies but soon-to-be-indicted BBB decided to ignore parent protests and turn our neighborhood middle school, Ames, into a Marine Academy.

It was later discovered that the Marine Academy was part of the scheme that would profit her personally and later lead to the fraud convictions of BBB and her Synesi/SUPES partner in crime, Gary Solomon.

Ames Middle School, was originally built to house Small Learning Communities focused on personalization and experiential learning. After first threatening to move a Marine Academy into the "underutilized" Ames building, Rahm and BBB, with help from then Ald. Roberto Maldonado, shifted gears and came up with a plan to militarize the entire school elevating military programs at the expense of music, sports, and art and sparking protests from the the mostly-Latino community and parents. In a neighborhood referendum, community members voted overwhelming (97%-3%) against the militarization of Ames. 

Lauren Fitzpatrick wrote in the Sun-Times:

In April 2013, grant applications were submitted for Carver Military Academy, Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Remember the battle over the Marine Academy? Look what's happened since.:

Schools Matter: White Male Protestant Elites Can No Afford Democratic Values

Schools Matter: White Male Protestant Elites Can No Afford Democratic Values:

White Male Protestant Elites Can No Afford Democratic Values

I have believed for some years that the American Republic would be safe only so long as white, male Protestant elites continued to believe they had enough influence and support to win elections.  

During the 2016 presidential campaign, authoritarian intellectual, Michael Anton concluded in a widely-read essay that immigration policy, changing demographics, and majority American values have made it clear that white conservatives can no longer afford to lose an election.  From New York Magazine:

The most intellectually important essay of the 2016 election cycle, and possibly of the whole political era that has begun, is “The Flight 93 Election.” Its previously anonymous author turns out to be former Bush administration speechwriter Michael Anton, reports Michael Warren. Anton is now working as a senior national security official in the Trump administration. Anton’s role in the administration lends his signature essay all the more importance as a statement of Trumpism. The essay has many interesting aspects, which made it the subject of fervent debate during the election. But its most notable characteristic is its almost textbook justification for authoritarianism. 

The premise of democracy is that — unlike dictatorships, in which the winning side gains total and essentially permanent power — the losers can accept defeat, because they know they have Schools Matter: White Male Protestant Elites Can No Afford Democratic Values:

DeVos' First Promises by Cheryl Binkley - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association: DeVos' First Promises by Cheryl Binkley:

Badass Teachers Association 

I listened to Betsy DeVos'  opening remarks to the Department of Education staff today, and was grateful for the Masters in Euphemistic Double Speak I earned under the various prior administrations at my schools and in the greater Education world.

Phil Rosenfelt, the long time Department Acting person spoke in code to his old colleagues, reminding everyone that all of them took an oath to uphold the Constitution and their mission was for equity and opportunity for the children, He spoke about the same length of time as Betsy on the importance of trying to listen to one another. (I remember once when I tried to gently suggest that to an administrator--, didn't work very well.) He did not give Betsy an effusive introduction, but was professional, respectful and welcomed her.

Betsy said all the things she thought she was supposed to say, that she would work with those who had been for her and those who had been against her, that she was an open door person (oddly, no one who has ever told me that as a boss actually was).

But careful as she was, there were a couple of places where she let slip what her actual perspective was.

She said all children are born with innate curiosity and wanted to learn, but there were problems. The problems were the adult humans around them who got in the way.

It doesn't take much to figure out that the adult humans she considers in the way are teachers. A word she could not bring herself to use. She spoke of educators, but not in proximity to words about students.

I am always suspicious of officials who call everyone who works in the education field Badass Teachers Association: DeVos' First Promises by Cheryl Binkley:

A Musical Salute to the GOP: Senate Confirms Jeff Sessions As U.S. Attorney General In 52-47 Vote

A Musical Salute to the GOP: Senate Confirms Jeff Sessions As U.S. Attorney General In 52-47 Vote