Special education advocate Bev Johns is threatened. | Fred Klonsky

Special education advocate Bev Johns is threatened. | Fred Klonsky:

Special education advocate Bev Johns is threatened.

Me and Bev Johns at a state conference of the Illinois Council for Exceptional Children.

My friend Bev Johns is a leading advocate for children with special needs in Illinois. Lately I have been reposting her information on my Facebook page warning of changes to the delivery of services to Illinois students with special needs that would not be in those students’ interests.

Apparently this has upset some of the state’s vested interests.

This morning, Bev sent me this email exchange:

Dear Bev, 

 Thank you for all you do for our kids with special needs. We are living in times when powerful, monied interests regularly resort to threats in order to silence thoughtful, child-centered and proven positions on education.

Please know that I have your back and consider you an invaluable ally in the fight for special education in Illinois. Please let me know what, if any, steps you would like me to take in response to these irresponsible silencing tactics.

Also, please feel to share this email. 

 All the best to you and yours. 

 Mary Fahey Hughes, Founder and Director, 19th Ward Parents for Special Education

—————————————

This morning I received an email from JUNO saying complaints had been received. I have sent emails to the EXACT SAME lists for over 2 years, and immediately remove anyone requesting that (I believe I have received only 2 such requests over the last 2 years).

On January 28, Kevin Rubenstein sent an email to all members of IAASE (the Illinois special ed administrators), signed by the leaders of IAASE, detailing their involvement in the Evidence Based (Vision 20/20) proposal to Special education advocate Bev Johns is threatened. | Fred Klonsky:

Massachusetts said NO to more charter schools, Connecticut should as well - Wait What?

Massachusetts said NO to more charter schools, Connecticut should as well - Wait What?:

Massachusetts said NO to more charter schools, Connecticut should as well

At the same time that Governor Dannel Malloy is instituting the deepest cuts in Connecticut history to Connecticut’s public schools he is diverting more than $110 million dollars a year in taxpayer funds to Connecticut’s privately owned and operated charter schools.

Malloy and his operatives now want to expand this outrageous money grab with a plan to increase the number of charter schools in Connecticut and implement a new funding proposal that would see an additional $40-$50 million a year diverted to the private corporations that own Connecticut’s existing charter schools.

Connecticut’s elected and appointed officials should take a deep pause and look to Massachusetts for an indication of what happens when a state adopts this so-called “money follows the child” funding system.

Last November the charter school industry in the Bay State tried to push through a state-wide ballot initiative that would have allowed more charter schools to be opened in the Commonwealth.

To fund their effort the charter school industry pumped more than $24 million dollars into their political campaign.

The cash came from large corporate education reform “dark money” groups that refuse to release the names of their donors, wealthy hedge fund owners, Massachusetts corporations and out-of-state contributors including the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  (See Wait, What? post Charter School Industry raised more than $24 million in 2016 record breaking defeat In Massachusetts).

But in this case, the massive outpouring of money couldn’t buy the Massachusetts said NO to more charter schools, Connecticut should as well - Wait What?:

Betsy DeVos 'is unprepared and unqualified' to be Education secretary, charter school booster Eli Broad says - LA Times

Betsy DeVos 'is unprepared and unqualified' to be Education secretary, charter school booster Eli Broad says - LA Times:

Betsy DeVos 'is unprepared and unqualified' to be Education secretary, charter school booster Eli Broad says

ELi Broad, the prominent local philanthropist behind a massive effort to increase the number of charter schools in Los Angeles, is protesting the appointment of Betsy DeVos as secretary of Education.

Broad sent a letter to U.S. senators Wednesday, asking them to vote against President Trump’s nominee.

“I believe she is unprepared and unqualified for the position,” Broad wrote. “Indeed, with Betsy DeVos at the helm of the U.S. Department of Education, much of the good work that has been accomplished to improve public education for all of America’s children could be undone.”

Betsy DeVos is a billionaire Republican fundraiser based in Grand Rapids, Mich. Before Trump announced her nomination, she spent her dollars and connections promoting school choice, in the form of both vouchers and charter schools.

School vouchers use public money to fund private — often religious — schools, and charter schools are publicly funded, but can be privately run.

Broad has contributed heavily through a political action committee to local school board candidates who support charter schools, and his philanthropic group is backing an effort to increase their growth in Los Angeles, which already has more such schools than any other city in the U.S. 

But despite their agreement on charter schools, Broad thinks DeVos’ views are too extreme. “We must have a Secretary of Education who believes in public education and the need to keep public schools public,” he wrote.

During a contentious confirmation hearing last month, DeVos drew ire for her apparent lack of basic understanding of some key education laws. Before the hearing, Broad wrote, he questioned her support for “unregulated charter schools and school vouchers.” Her performance reinforced his doubts. 

On Tuesday, the Senate education committee voted along party lines to advance her candidacy.

But her confirmation might be in trouble. On Wednesday, two Republican senators on the education committee who voted for DeVos to get through committee said they would vote no on the Senate floor. One more Republican defection would mean DeVos doesn’t get the job.

DeVos’ nomination has put Democratic charter school supporters in a hard spot because Betsy DeVos 'is unprepared and unqualified' to be Education secretary, charter school booster Eli Broad says - LA Times:

Supreme Court Nominee Gorsuch: Is “Constitutional Originalism” a Cover for Conservative Judicial Activism? | Ed In The Apple

Supreme Court Nominee Gorsuch: Is “Constitutional Originalism” a Cover for Conservative Judicial Activism? | Ed In The Apple:

Supreme Court Nominee Gorsuch: Is “Constitutional Originalism” a Cover for Conservative Judicial Activism?

I hear President Trump was going to make the announcement of his Supreme Court nomination during the Super Bowel half time show – afraid of massive demonstrations  by 300 pound guys in shoulder pads – settled for prime time bumping favorite TV shows.

The Democrats have to decide: political strategy, a game plan, and, the question of the candidate himself.  The New York Times editorial opines the choices.

In spite of the accolades heaped on the nominee I have doubts, serious doubts.

The nominee defined himself as an “originalist” in the footsteps of Justice Scalia.

What is “originalism?”

One definition,

Originalism, in which the meaning of the Constitution is interpreted as fixed as of the time it was enacted, and non-originalism, in which the meaning of the Constitution is viewed as evolving with changes in society and culture.

Another,

“…  there is an identifiable original intent or original meaning, contemporaneous with a constitution’s or statute’s ratification, which should govern its subsequent interpretation. The divisions between these theories relate to what exactly that identifiable original intent or original meaning is: the intentions of the authors or the ratifiers, the original meaning of the text, a combination of the two, or the original meaning of the text but not its expected application.”

How do we know the intent of the framers of the Constitution? From April until September of 1787 the fifty-four  delegates, all white men, mostly wealthy, including slaveholders from the Southern states. drifted in and out of the sessions. They argued, threatened, proposed deals, traded this for that, and, eventually produced a heavily compromised document.

The large states and the small states, the slave states and the free states, farmers and plantation owners, lawyers and fools cobbled a constitution..  In order to gain passage compromises were crafted: in the 3/5 compromise slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person in the computation of population to determine the number of representatives for each state. Although many of the delegates found slavery reprehensible the question of slavery is absent form the final constitution.

(Read Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Supreme Court Nominee Gorsuch: Is “Constitutional Originalism” a Cover for Conservative Judicial Activism? | Ed In The Apple:

Universal Public Education and the Common Good | janresseger

Universal Public Education and the Common Good | janresseger:

Universal Public Education and the Common Good

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos to be our next U.S. Secretary of Education has been a wake up call.

You may disagree with some of the particulars raised by the Senators who have been debating the DeVos nomination, but the hearings have diminished talk about the smaller issues and highlighted one thing: our universal public education in the United States is a primary civic institution of great value.

In Tuesday’s hearing, when the Senators on the HELP Committee took a vote and decided to send the DeVos nomination on to the full Senate for consideration, just about everybody talked about the public outcry—the volume of phone calls, e-mails, unusual requests for meetings, crowds and rallies pushing the Senators to protect public education. Many Senators declared their insistence that our education secretary at least value the public schools, understand the terms of the debate that has been sweeping around public education now for two decades, and realize that the U.S. Department of Education’s fundamental mission is protecting the rights of children who have historically been marginalized. It became clear that the party loyalty of some of the Republicans on the committee was being tested by the outcry of their constituents, and it became clearer yesterday afternoon when Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski promised they will vote against the DeVos confirmation when the full Senate votes.

The federal policy debates about public schools over the past twenty years have been largely shaped by our society’s computerized capacity to produce and analyze huge data sets—the test scores produced by the mandates of No Child Left Behind—and a drive by many policy makers to increase schools’ accountability for the test scores of their students. Data have demonstrated that schools in poor communities, on average, do not “produce” the same kind of high test scores as the schools in very wealthy enclaves, and the Bush and Obama Universal Public Education and the Common Good | janresseger:

DR. WILLIAM BARBER AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE- SOMETHING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT - Perdaily.com

DR. WILLIAM BARBER AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE- SOMETHING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT - Perdaily.com:

DR. WILLIAM BARBER AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE- SOMETHING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT

If you have found yourself profoundly depressed since the election and assumption of the presidency by Donald Trump, you should have been at Occidental College on Wednesday night- it would have given you hope. The Reverend Dr. William Barber II not only laid out in painful detail what put Trump in the White House, but also took the time in the clearest of possible terms to lay out what we the people could do about it now by coming together and asserting our majority status in what still remains for the present a putative democracy.

Barber thesis is that endemic racism is not only alive and well, but is literally the only force powerful enough to get poor White voters in 95 of the poorest counties in the United States and elsewhere in the South to vote against their own economic self-interest.

Instead of these poor voters wondering why some of those pushing Trump or prior Republican candidates make as much as $97,000 an hour, while fighting a $15 an hour minimum wage, the "gift" of racism is that it is able to deflect the blame of poor White explotation by the obscenely rich to the usual Black, Latino, Muslim, and Jewish suspects, which continues to succeed in the 21st century by offering equally poor and downtrodden working class Whites the consolation prize of feeling at least nominally superior.

What this has left us with in this latest election- and many of the ones proceeding it- is the voting reality that this profoundly poor racist motived13 Southern states voter core has given conservative Republicans and now Trump an almost insurmountable 171 electoral college leg-up in winning presidential elections, when one realizes that Republicans then only need to accumulate another 99 electoral votes out of the remaining 37 states.

But in North Carolina, Barber didn't stop at just pointing out the racist fear motivated model that has kept putting conservatives and now Trump in power. His Moral Mondays and other programs coordinated with litigation networked across racial and state lines to engage a multi-racial and ethnic have-not majority that has finally given constitutional "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" a substantive new reality reflected in a new Democratic governor and other elected officials.

This has been accomplished, while waging successful judicial confrontation and reversal of what had been the systematic gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

What I found to be a clear vindication of Dr. Barber's DR. WILLIAM BARBER AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE- SOMETHING TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT - Perdaily.com:

The Gathering Storm (annotated) | Bill Ayers

The Gathering Storm (annotated) | Bill Ayers:

The Gathering Storm (annotated)

Keep your eyes open, your heads up, your minds alert and your bodies ready. Trump ran an explicitly fascist campaign, and no one should now be surprised that he’s moving quickly to promote a fascist program and consolidate a fascist government. It’s not fascism yet, but demonstrably pre-fascist, and what we do now will be decisive.

The fight-back is inspiring—but we must keep organizing, gathering, staying mobilized, joining hands and rising up.

An authentic and effective opposition (I repeat myself) will not be led by the Democrats, because a bipartisan effort got us to this spot: permanent war, austerity, privatization, trade unions destroyed, mass incarceration, income inequality, hyper-segregation, and more. Take education…Democrats and Repulsicans alike have agreed that education is a product to be sold at the market place; yes Betsy DeVos is a monster, but she stands at the end of a long road taken decades ago.

So we must build the opposition, unite all who can be united, and offer an alternative to both neoliberalism and fascism. The US empire is in a steady and irreversible decline, a moment of great danger and real possibility.

Here we go!

Fascism:

Forges national unity under an autocratic, authoritarian leader—the classic Strong Man—who will “solve all your problems” as he implements a program advocating stability, law and order, and more and more centralized power, claiming all of this is necessary in order to defend the homeland, and to respond effectively to economic instability.

Trump’s inauguration speech is a textbook: “America first;” depicting the country as damaged—“American carnage”— and in need of radical restoration; claiming legitimacy exclusively from the people who voted for him; stating that he alone stands above the corrupt political class and has a mandate to sweep the slate clean and start over.

Trump issues an executive order denying federal funds to “Sanctuary Cities.”

White nationalist and top Trump advisor Steve Bannon is appointed by Trump to a permanent seat on the National Security Council, as the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence are removed.

Trump purges most of the top officials at the State Department in a single day.

Attempts to mobilize a mass base through deliberately constructed fear and hatred as the leader prepares for armed conflict and permanent war, The Gathering Storm (annotated) | Bill Ayers:

 

How Big Data Becomes Psy Ops and Tilts the World Towards its Own Aims: Next Stop, Public Education | educationalchemy

How Big Data Becomes Psy Ops and Tilts the World Towards its Own Aims: Next Stop, Public Education | educationalchemy:

How Big Data Becomes Psy Ops and Tilts the World Towards its Own Aims: Next Stop, Public Education

The psy ops tactics used to get Donald Trump elected to the U.S. Presidency (still having gag reflex) are the same ones being used in public schools, using children as their “data” source. Given the power they had on influencing the electorate, imagine what they could do with 12 years of public school data collected on your child.

What data? And how was it used?

A psychologist named Michael Kosinski (see full report) from Cambridge developed a method to analyze Facebook members, using the cute little personality quizzes or games. What started as a fun experiment resulted with the largest data set combining psychometric scores with Facebook profiles ever to be collected. Dr. Kosinski is a leading expert in psychometrics, a data-driven sub-branch of psychology. His work is grounded on the Five Factors of Personality theory which include something called OCEAN: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

So many people volunteered their personal information to play these games and take these quizzes that before long Kosinski had volumes of data from which he could now predict all sorts of things about the attitudes and behaviors of these individuals. He applied the Five Factors (Big Five Theory) model (well-known in psychometric circles) and developed a system by which he could predict very personal and detailed behaviors of individuals on a level deeper than had been accessed by prior models or systems.

Enter Cambridge Analytica (CA),  a company connected to a British firm called SCL Group, which provides governments, political groups and companies around the world with services ranging from military disinformation campaigns to social media branding and voter targeting. CA indirectly acquired Kosinksi’s model and How Big Data Becomes Psy Ops and Tilts the World Towards its Own Aims: Next Stop, Public Education | educationalchemy:

The Detroit Lyin’s | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The Detroit Lyin’s | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:
The Detroit Lyin’s

When asked about the low test scores of Detroit’s charter schools during her confirmation hearing, Betsy DeVos said that she “looks forward to correcting some of the record regarding Detroit.”

While it is common knowledge that the reform that Michigan’s position on the NAEP list has dropped in the time that DeVos has supported her style of education reform there, there are still people out there writing about a Detroit miracle.

On January 12th, James Goenner wrote an Op-Ed in the Detroit News about the miraculous Muskegon Heights School District.  Goenner was a consultant to the Muskegon Heights ‘transformation’ so anything he says should be, at least, fact checked.

According to Goenner, Muskegon Heights was broken beyond repair until the district became an all charter district where parents have choice about which school their children go to.  As a result:

Fast-forward to today and you’ll find that the Muskegon Heights Public School Academy has strong leadership, balanced books, and improving academics. It is on a glide path to pay off its old debt. All of its nearly 1,000 students attend by choice. No one is assigned. Like all Michigan charter schools, it’s prohibited by law from levying taxes. Because charters receive less money than districts, it provides taxpayers with a bigger bang for their buck.

And this solution is replicable. It’s a strategy that could be deployed with struggling districts throughout the nation to create a fresh start for kids in a taxpayer-friendly way.

All of this was accomplished by people who cared enough to persist and had the stamina to overcome the numerous obstacles that were thrown in their way. Betsy DeVos was one of them, and so was I. Without her quiet 

The Detroit Lyin’s | Gary Rubinstein's Blog:

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos: We're Not Done Yet

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos: We're Not Done Yet:

DeVos: We're Not Done Yet

The HELP committee approved her, and then two members of that committee who voted "yes" to send her on to the full Senate indicated that they would vote No to her appointment to the USED Secretary post.

So. We're not done yet.

Contact your Senator. If you know they're voting against DeVos, thank them and let them know that you support their choice (because you can be sure they're getting pressure from Important People who think they should change their minds). If you know they're voting for DeVos, keep the pressure on anyway. Let them know that there is a price they're paying for that support. Make them know that the vote is costing them something.

And if you're not sure, contact them anyway. Often. By phone. By fax. Repeatedly.

Congressmen and their staffs are reporting that they've never taken such an electronic hammering. The numbers being reported are staggering-- five figures, six figures.

She may still be approved, but we have already won a victory. We have already made the Trump administration pay a price, made them use some of their juice to make this happen. The roar of opposition has jarred loose many of the people who have been anti-DeVos silently. Good lord-- Eli Broad, charter booster and reformster extraordinaire, came out against DeVos today. If DeVos takes the office, she and Trump and the GOP Senators who put her there will know, despite their bluster, that we are paying attention, watching, looking over their collective shoulders.

A DeVos defeat would be extraordinary, virtually unprecedented. And it could still happen.

So here's the link to FaxZero, the suddenly-famous service that will send up to five free faxes a day without any need for a sign-up or an account-- and they already have Senate fax numbers programmed in and ready to go. And here's the link for emails and phone numbers.

The vote is now expected as early as Friday morning, so send something tonight before you got to bed, tomorrow before you go to work, and any other spare minute you have during the day. If they are going to foist this unqualified menace on us, make them feel like they are climbing up a steep hill in a heavy hailstorm to do it.

Maybe-- just maybe-- we can make some history. But there is no doubt that we can make some noise while we make ourselves felt in Washington. CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos: We're Not Done Yet:

Defeat DeVos- Call Your Senator Now

DeVos Vote in Senate as Early as Friday, February 3, 2017 | deutsch29

DeVos Vote in Senate as Early as Friday, February 3, 2017 | deutsch29:

DeVos Vote in Senate as Early as Friday, February 3, 2017

Defeat DeVos- Call Your Senator Now

From the US Senate Democrats website, dated February 01, 2017:

Senator McConnell filed cloture on the nomination of Elisabeth DeVos to be Secretary of Education. Under the rules, tomorrow – Thursday – will be an intervening day. The cloture motion on the DeVos nomination will ripen as early as 1 hour after the Senate convenes on Friday, February 3. If cloture is invoked, there will then be up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate before a vote on confirmation.

So, if the DeVos vote is sped through the Senate as quickly as is possible, then the vote will occur on Friday, February 03, 2017. The vote could also occur as late as Wednesday, February 08, 2017. However, given the Republican majority in the Senate coupled by the Republican push to get DeVos confirmed before any more Republican doubt is allowed to ripen and any more Republican votes lost, it seems unlikely that the DeVos vote will occur any later than Monday, February 06, 2017, or Tuesday, February 07, 2017.

As I write this, I just so happen to be watching All About Eve (1950). Just heard Bette Davis (“Margo Channing”) say her famous line, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Indeed.

  Betsy DeVos, looking as though she is Googling “federal education law” on the sly.

____________________________________________________________

Released July 2016– Book Three:

School Choice: The End of Public Education? 

  (Click image to enlarge)

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of both A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?.

Don’t care to buy from Amazon? Purchase my books from Powell’s City of Books instead.

DeVos Vote in Senate as Early as Friday, February 3, 2017 | deutsch29:

When did the Catholic school teacher ban occur? Never. | Reclaim Reform

When did the Catholic school teacher ban occur? Never. | Reclaim Reform:

When did the Catholic school teacher ban occur? Never.

American children in Catholic schools were traditionally taught by nuns, nuns who took a sacred vow of obedience to the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope in the Vatican in Rome. American Catholic school teachers were by-and-large nuns.

During WWII against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan, the years of deadly battle created incredible and long lasting animosities against these enemies. In America, Italian and German stores and restaurants were burned as many police authorities turned a blind eye to the assailants; Japanese-Americans were interred (detained and robbed of their properties and livelihood) as American authorities invaded, searched and plundered many of their homes and workplaces.

The Roman Catholic nuns, who dressed as many Muslim women today dress, were not “detained” or searched. Their garb was a point of open ridicule by Klan members in a few parts of America, but American authorities did not ban or threaten to make their garb illegal by American law. No attempts were made to ban their travel.

Even after WWII, the McCarthy era witch hunts were not directed at the “habits” worn by nuns; no American authorities attempted to make their vows illegal. Catholic nuns wereWhen did the Catholic school teacher ban occur? Never. | Reclaim Reform:

Don’t Confirm Betsy DeVos | The Merrow Report

Don’t Confirm Betsy DeVos | The Merrow Report:

Don’t Confirm Betsy DeVos

This is the letter I have sent to about 40 United States Senators, including Senator Deb Fischer, the Nebraska Republican.  If you agree, please communicate with your Senators and with Senator Fischer, whose vote may well determine the immediate future of public education.

“Dear Senator Fischer,

In the 41 years I spent covering education for PBS and NPR, I never encountered anyone less qualified for leadership than Betsy DeVos, the Administration’s nominee for United States Secretary of Education.

I reported for the PBS NewsHour and National Public Radio from early 1974 to late 2015. In fact, I cut my reporter’s teeth on IDEA, the 1975 federal law originally known as The Education of All Handicapped Children Act and followed that story with great interest throughout my career.

The Charter School movement was born in 1988, when many of education’s original thinkers met at the headwaters of the Mississippi River to develop the notion. I moderated that historic 3-day meeting, which led to the first state charter legislation (Minnesota, 1991) and the first charter school in Saint Paul in 1992.  From that day forward I reported on charter schools, covering post-Katrina schooling in New Orleans for six years (12 reports for the NewsHour and a 1-hour film for Netflix, “Rebirth: New Orleans”), as well as reports about charter schools in Los Angeles, Arizona, Texas, Washington, DC and elsewhere.

In 1989 I was invited to interview for the position of Education Advisor on George H. W. Bush’s Domestic Policy Council.  Although I was told the job was mine for the asking, I chose to remain a reporter.

During my career I covered progressive ‘open classrooms’ and back to basics “No Excuses” elementary schools where children marched silently to their classes.  I spent time with education’s radicals like John Holt and Jonathan Kozol and ideologues like Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC.  

I covered the seminal 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” Secretary Ted Bell’s “Wall Charts, and the rise and fall of No Child Left Behind, the law that set off our current obsession with standardized testing.

While the federal government’s track record in public education is mixed, the past 16 years have demonstrated quite clearly that a micro-managing Washington, no matter the political party, cannot run public education.  Perhaps it’s time to return to basics. In education that would mean the collection and dissemination of Don’t Confirm Betsy DeVos | The Merrow Report:

BATs Beware! A FOXX is Loose!! Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association: BATs Beware! A FOXX is Loose!!:

BATs Beware! A FOXX is Loose!!

The House of Representatives recently released the names of the new members of their Education and Workplace committee.

As you can see, the new Chair of the committee is Representative Virginia Foxx from North Carolina, and she is exerting her voice as a proponent of school choice quite loudly.

Recent releases from the committee include:

The Power of #SchoolChoice

Foxx: School Choice Provides Real Hope and Opportunity

But school choice is not the only thing that we have to look forward to from Representative Virginia Foxx.

She is also a believer in right to work!

 

In 2015 - 2016 she sponsored H.R.615 “National Right-to-Work Act.” She has made statements to announce her beliefs, questioning the needs for unions. Of course, it comes as no shock that she supports Andrew Puzder for Secretary of Labor.

Now she is the chair of the House Education and Workplace Committee.

But what exactly does this mean?

(The following words are not our own, but we found them to be quite succinct in their answer on a question form recently.)

In both the House and Senate, the primary privilege of being the Chair of any Committee is the ability to set the agenda. That is, they determine which legislation will be brought up for consideration and/or passage, as well as which topics will receive Congressional attention in the form of informative hearings. Committee Chairmen have a number of tools at their disposal to obtain their preferred policy outcomes. The best of these are (1) the ability to determine who from their party will be on their Committee (they have a large say, though possibly not final); (2) the ability to produce a "Chairman's mark" of any legislation the Committee considers, which can generally be Badass Teachers Association: BATs Beware! A FOXX is Loose!!: