Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos! | Diane Ravitch's blog

Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos! | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos!

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos repeats the hackneyed and erroneous claims that American public schools are failing.

She says the Obama ideas (testing, charters, and accountability) have failed, so she wants to impose her own ideas, which sound no diffferent from the failed ideas of the status quo.

American schools could use some support, not another four years of carping and disruption.

I explained in my book “Reign of Error” that the “Failing Schools” narrative is a hoax.

As of 2013, test scores on the federal tests called NAEP were the highest in 40 years of testing. For whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

The graduation rate was the highest in history, for all groups.

The dropout rate was the lowest ever recorded.

Scores on NAEP went flat from 2013-2015, possibly because of Common Core or because the test-and-punish approach had gone about as far as it could go. The flatline showed the failure of the NCLB-RTTT policies, not the schools.

We have the greatest economy in the world and the most productive workforce. Our public schools built our economy. Stop bashing our public schools, our teachers, and our students!

Please tweet @betsydevos and urge her to read “Reign of Error” or send her a copy.

I will send her an autographed copy.Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos! | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Kevin Carey: Researchers “Surprised” by “Dismal Results” from Vouchers

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Kevin Carey is the director of education research at the New America Foundation in D.C., a think tank funded by tech magnates. He writes in the New York Times that researchers are reacting with surprise at the “dismal results” from vouchers. I am not sure why this is news, because vouchers have been tried out since 1990 in Milwaukee and elsewhere and have been subject to numerous evaluations, alm

Tennessee: Legislators Propose Vouchers for Shelby County, One of Nation’s Most Fiscally Distressed Districts

6by dianeravitch / 2h

A bill was filed in the Tennessee legislature to establish vouchers for students in Shelby County. It would divert $18 million from the district, which is already one of the most fiscally disadvantaged districts in the nation. The voucher program would deepen the fiscal distress of the district. With the amount of the vouchers, students would not be accepted at first-rate private schools but at l

Education Law Center: America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts

19by dianeravitch / 3h

The Education Law Center lists the most fiscally distressed districts in the nation. You will note that one of them is Shelby County, Tennessee, where the Gates Foundation and Stand for Children expended a great deal of effort to introduce charters and district consolidation as a mini-bandaid to the district’s financial problems. The Gates Foundation paid to bring in the Boston Consulting Group t

YESTERDAY

Westfield/Springfield/Agawam/Holyoke, Massachusetts: Do You Want a Gulen Turkish Charter to Compete with Your Public Schools?

16by dianeravitch / 14h

A public school activist in Massachusetts sent this letter from Robert Amsterdam, an attorney retained by the Government of Turkey to investigate the large charter chain run by Fetullah Gulen. Gulen is an Islamic cleric who lives in seclusion in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He has some vague connection with some 170 or so charter schools that are paid for with public funds but staffed an

DeVos to Conservative Conference: I Will Replace the Bush-Obama Failed Ideas with My Own Failed Ideas

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Betsy DeVos gave a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), explaining that the programs created by George W. Bush and Barack Obama had failed, and she would replace them with her own ideas . She did not point out that her own ideas have failed too. Just look at the mess she has made of Michigan, where the state’s rankings on the federal test (NAEP) have plummeted, and where

DeVos Family Fight Over Transgender Students?

10by dianeravitch / 22h

According to the media (which the president assures us is lying, corrupt, dishonest, and “the enemy of the American people”), Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos objected to the president’s decision to remove federal protection for transgender students. She expressed concern for the harm that might occur to the students, but was overruled by the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. https:

Mercedes Schneider: When Tenure Is Abolished, Teachers Leave

6by dianeravitch / 23h

Mercedes Schneider reviews a new report from the Education Research Alliance in New Orleans. The bottom line: When Louisiana eliminated tenure, teacher turnover increased. https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2017/02/22/louisiana-research-when-tenure-ends-teachers-leave/ This shouldn’t be surprising. Removing job security encourages attrition. Other research has shown that instability and teacher chur

Lindsay Wagner: North Carolina Is Already a DeVos World in Education

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Veteran education journalist Lindsay Wagner writes that anyone who wants to know what Betsy DeVos will do to schools need look no further than North Carolina. It has already happened there. North Carolina was taken over by the Tea Party in 2010 and has gone on a rampage to privatize education and defund public schools. The legislature wiped out its very successful investment in teacher preparatio

Mike Klonsky: Why Florida Will be the Model For Betsy DeVos: She Owns It

13by dianeravitch / 1d

Mike Klonsky reviews Betsy DeVos’ long and fruitful relationship with pro-privatization politicians in Florida. She served on Jeb Bush’s board. She has contributed to pro-school choice candidates. Florida is ideal, from her point of view, because of the free hand given to for-profit charter operators. Of course, it would be Florida that provides the model for the nation: Florida’s charter schools

Hello, Betsy DeVos! Watch This Video!

31by dianeravitch / 1d

Ms. DeVos: The state of Michigan, as you know, plans to close 38 schools, most of them in Detroit. Please watch this powerful documentary about school closings in Detroit, how they disproportionately affect black children, how they disproportionately affect children with special needs. Detroit is littered with closed schools. Don’t you realize that closing schools destroys communities and disrupt

Helen Ladd: The Failure of No Child Left Behind

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Professor Helen Ladd is one of the nation’s most distinguished economists of education; she holds a chair at Duke University. In this article , she reviews the federal program No Child Left Behind. The first conclusion one could draw was 

Please Help Educate Betsy DeVos! | Diane Ravitch's blog: