DeVos Says Schools Can Cooperate with ICE !

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos provoked an outcry Tuesday when she said schools can choose to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on potentially undocumented students.

“I think that’s a school decision, it’s a local community decision,” DeVos told the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “I refer to the fact that we have laws and we also are compassionate. I urge this body to do its job and address and clarify where there is confusion around this.”

DeVos was responding to a question from Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) about whether she thinks school leaders should call ICE on students or their parents.

Advocacy groups immediately protested her answer, pointing out that under the Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe, all children ― undocumented or not ― are entitled to a free public education. Some demanded that DeVos issue an immediate clarification in light of this fact.

Elizabeth Hill, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, provided HuffPost with a clarification of DeVos’ remarks on Wednesday. “Her position is that schools must comply with Plyler and all other applicable and relevant law,” said Hill.

During the hearing, DeVos did note that the 1982 Supreme Court decision requires public schools to educate all students, including those who are undocumented. Still, she repeatedly said it was a school’s decision if it wanted to call ICE on kids and their parents.

Koch Funded Attack on Teachers' Unions

The Koch brothers, the DeVos family and other wealthy, anti-union corporate interests will use the Supreme Court to try to take away your voice and your union. 

Feb. 26 is when the Supreme Court case called Janus v. AFSCME is being heard. Through this case, these wealthy funders seek to defund and destabilize unions and make it harder for us to speak up for our students, patients, families and communities. 

Strong unions mean stronger communities, and workers need and want strong unions. That’s why on Saturday, Feb. 24, we’re standing together for a Working People’s Day of Action. 

Will you stand with us on Saturday, Feb. 24 by signing this petition? 

Our union is our vehicle to fight for a better life for people, and, unfortunately, the funders of the Janus case see that as a threat to their power. 

DeVos, Charters, and Corporate Theft

by Jeff Bryan, 

Betsy DeVos wants to give your tax dollars to private schools and businesses and tell you it’s an education “transformation.”

That’s the main theme of an address she gave this week to a conference held by the organization she helped found and lead, the American Federation for Children.

Declaring “the time has expired for ‘reform,'” she called instead for a “transformation… that will open up America’s closed and antiquated education system.” Her plan also opens your wallet to new moochers of taxpayer dollars.

By the way, AFC, according to SourceWatch, is a “conservative 501(c)(4) dark money group that promotes the school privatization agenda via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other avenues.” It also grew out of a defunct PAC connected to DeVos called “All Children Matter” that ran afoul legally in Ohio and Wisconsin and still owes Ohio $5.3 million for breaking election laws.

So DeVos had a supportive crowd for her speech, but what should the rest of us think of it?

The transformation she calls for seems to rest on the premise that, “It shouldn’t matter where a student learns so long as they are actually learning.” But what does she mean by “learning”? And what should the public expect about how its funds are being spent?

The Trump /DeVos Budget for Schools

President Trump’s and Secretary of Education DeVos’ education budget was unveiled this week. It’s devastating news for public schools. Rethinking Schools stands firmly against these unprecedented attacks on public education and we need your support to continue our fight against privatization—and to support and improve public schools.     Public schools remain the only educational institutions that have the potential and obligation to serve all students. Yet Trump’s education budget shows how this administration puts corporate interests over the needs of students and communities. The budget gives to charter and voucher schools—and steals from public school children: Gives $500 million more for charter schools (up 50% from current funding), $250 million to expand and “study’ voucher schools, and  $1 billion more to encourage school “choice” within districts. Cuts $1.2 billion for after-school programs that serve 1.6 million children, most of whom are poor, and $2.1 billion for teacher education and class-size reduction. Cuts $490 million for college work-study programs.  Cuts $700 million in Perkins loans for disadvantaged students. Cuts funding for mental health services, anti-bullying initiatives, physical education, and science and engineering instruction. Slashes $168 million for career and technical education and eliminates $96 million for adult literacy. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Fight the Trump/DeVos agenda by making a donation to Rethinking Schools so that we can expand our work and strengthen the educational justice movement.

Trump, DeVos Budget Proposal for Public Education

We need your help. When Betsy DeVos was nominated to be secretary of education, we sounded the alarm because of her role in Michigan and Florida as an anti-public education and pro-voucher lobbyist—what I call a “public school denier.” The public agreed with us, but the White House and GOP-led Senate ignored the outcry of millions of Americans from across the country and confirmed her appointment—using a tiebreaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence. The budget DeVos and the Trump administration issued today reaffirms our concerns—big-time. 


We feared DeVos was ill-prepared to be education secretary, and now, after seeing this budget, we know she doesn’t care. The Trump-DeVos budget is manifestly cruel to children and catastrophic to public schools, while being a windfall for those who want to profit off of children or make education a commodity.

That is why we are reaching out to everyone, regardless of your job title, where you live or your political party. We need your help in taking on the Trump-DeVos budget and its consequences.

Write to Betsy DeVos and oppose this cruel and catastrophic budget today.

Just look at what the DeVos budget proposes: 

• While Trump and DeVos chose private schools for their children, with small class sizes, they want to eliminate the federal funding that helps America’s public schools lower class sizes.
• While Trump and DeVos can afford whatever their children and grandchildren need or want, and while Ivanka Trump got $19 billion for her parental leave project, the budget completely zeros out all current federal programs that keep millions of poor children safe and well-fed in after-school and summer programs.
• Trump says there is nothing more important than being a teacher, but he eliminates the loan forgiveness program that helps students pursue teaching careers, eliminates funding for teacher preparation and educator support, and guts most other programs that alleviate student debt or make college more affordable.
• Trump says vocational education is the way of the future yet slashes career and technical education funding.
• DeVos promised not to hurt children with special needs, but the budget cuts one-quarter of the Medicaid funding that now pays for essential school-based services like physical therapists, feeding tubes and other medical equipment, and health screenings. 

And what do they fund with all these cuts? This budget provides tax cuts for the wealthy and redirects funding for expanded charter schools and vouchers. It spends $250 million on further research for vouchers even though the most recent studies, including one on the D.C. voucher program by DeVos’ own Education Department, show that vouchers hurt kids. And it diverts $1 billion from Title I funding—including $550 million in direct Title I cuts—to fund an Arne Duncan-like Race to the Top-style program.

Tell Betsy DeVos that our children deserve better. She must stop her crusade for private, religious schools and failed voucher programs and fully fund public education.

Federal and state funding is vitally important for our public schools to help children. Just ask the people in Van Wert, Ohio, who spent a day hosting DeVos and me. DeVos saw examples of great public schools in this rural area that voted big-time for Donald Trump. She saw the importance of early childhood education, observed hands-on learning in robotics classes, and learned about after-school programs, including a senior project that helps provide backpacks filled with food for the weekend to kids who receive free and reduced-price lunch. 

DeVos Confirmed Despite Protests

Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch

The confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education is an outrageous insult to the millions of people who send their children to public schools, to the millions of students who attend public schools, to the millions of educators who work in public schools, and to the millions of people–like me–who graduated from public school.

As expected, the vote was 50-50, and Vice President Pence was called in to cast the tie-breaking vote.

She was never a student, a parent, an educator or school board member of public schools. It is her life’s work to tear down public education. She does not respect the line of separation between church and state. She supports for-profit charter schools.

She is ignorant of federal law, federal programs, and federal policy. When asked at her Senate hearing about the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, she did not know it was a federal law. She had given no thought to lessening the burden of debt that college students bear, which now exceeds $1 trillion. At a time when the federal role in aiding students with the high cost of college needs to be redesigned, she knows nothing about it.

As the ethics counselors for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama pointed out, DeVos has financial conflicts of interest which she refuses to divest. She told the Senate committee that she had no role in her mother’s foundation, which has funneled millions of dollars to anti-LGBT organizations, but her name appears on 17 years of the foundation’s audited tax returns. She told the committee that online charter corporations produce stellar results, but researchers demonstrated with facts that she was wrong.

Choice policies in Michigan have caused the test scores in that state to decline. Detroit, overrun with charters and choice, is a chaotic mess.

It is a sad day for American public education when a person who has repeatedly expressed contempt for public schools is confirmed as Secretary of Education.

Defeat DeVos- Call Your Senator Now

The Senate education committee just voted to advance Betsy DeVos’ nomination for secretary of education. Next she’ll face the real test: a vote of the entire senate. It's taken almost a month for her nomination to get this far, and the fight isn’t nearly over yet. You've sent more than 1 million emails, and called senators more than 50,000 times, and believe me - they are taking notice. In explaining why she'll vote no, Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) said that 95 percent of the people that contacted her office opposed DeVos. Ninety-five percent! At the vote this morning, Senator Murkowski (R-AK) said she is still undecided, and that she is listening to the serious concerns of the thousands of her constituents who have called. And they're not the only ones. We've heard from senate staff that they're getting more emails and calls from our members and allies about stopping DeVos than they've ever had about a nominee.  Trust me - you are making a difference. We have to keep the pressure on. Keep calling. Keep emailing. Keep telling your senators that Betsy DeVos cannot be put in charge of our nation’s schools.  Call 1-855-882-6229 to speak to your senators. Click here to email them. Our senators need to know that we will never back down when our students and public education are on the line. Let’s keep up the fight.  - Lily Lily Eskelsen García President National Education Association

Betsy DeVos and Blackwater

 By Marc Norton

Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who has been called “America’s most notorious mercenary” by author and journalist Jeremy Scahill, has emerged as an influential advisor to the incoming Donald Trump regime.

Prince is also the brother of Betsy DeVos, who is in the process of being confirmed as secretary of education — and an advocate for the privatization of public schools.

The connection between these two reactionary political players is no secret, but is one of those barely-known facts that has remained mostly hidden in plain sight.  Despite significant press around the confirmation hearings for DeVos, the corporate media has not called the public’s attention to her relationship to Prince.  Plaudits go to the The Intercept for publishing an article on January 17 by Scahill about Prince's connection to Trump, and highlighting his connection to DeVos.

Prince’s biggest claim to infamy is as the founder of Blackwater, a private security firm that hired mercenaries to augment US military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, among many other places.  Blackwater, now transformed into a company called Academi, had an intimate relationship with the CIA, and was regarded by many as one of the CIA’s go to organizations when it wanted to contract out its dirty work.  Blackwater got into hot water more than once, particularly in 2007 when some of its mercenaries gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians, including a 9-year old boy, in Baghdad.

Scahill reports that trusted sources tell him Prince has been giving Trump advice on his staff picks for the Defense Department and the State Department.  Nothing like having friends in high places if you want work.

Prince is close to another Trump advisor, the racist Steve Bannon.  Prince has often appeared on Bannon’s Breitbart Radio.  Last July, Prince told Bannon that a Trump administration could and should create a new version of the Phoenix Program, the CIA assassination program during the Vietnam War that “neutralized” tens of thousands of alleged Viet Cong leaders.  The new assassination program would presumably target “radical Islamic extremists,” and who knows who else.

DeVos, while not a public advocate of murder like her brother, has worked for decades in an effort to undermine and assassinate public education.  A billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, she is a prominent Republican donor and fund-raiser.  Her political efforts have centered around campaigns to give parents taxpayer-funded “vouchers” so they can pull their children out of the public education system and send them to private schools, including religious schools.  She has also campaigned to expand charter schools, which are publicly funded but run by private companies.

She isn’t responsible for her brother, of course, but the two are closely linked politically, as described in a 2014 Mother Jones article — and there’s no sign anywhere that she has said she doesn’t approve of his actions.

DeVos hails from Michigan, where she is a political force to be reckoned with.  She has been credited with creating a network of charter schools in Michigan that are virtually unregulated, despite the abysmal test scores of their students.  Dick DeVos, Betsy’s husband, led and funded the successful campaign in 2012 that turned Michigan into a so-called “right to work” state, effectively outlawing the union shop.  That includes, of course, public schools.

DeVos was called the “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee” for the office of Secretary of Education ever by Randi Weingarten, the President of the American Federation of Teachers. (See below)

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a "Horrifying Prospect" for Public Sc...

Public school teacher speaks up.

Betsy DeVos - Bad for America's Children

The more we learn, the more we are certain that Betsy DeVos is bad for public schools and for kids.

When De Vos has to choose between quality schools and “the free market,” she chooses “the free market” of privatized choice every time. The best interests of children take a back seat.

And we know the DeVos endgame–shut down our neighborhood public schools, and replace them with a patchwork of charters, private schools and online learning.

We can’t let that happen and we need your help. Present and future generations of children are depending on us to act now.  We now know that some Senators have grave doubts. It is our job to make those doubts grow into active resistance to DeVos. Our senators are in district offices from 12/17 – 1/2.

Here are our three toolkits to help you do your part.

Toolkit 1. Call your senators’ offices. The toolkit with numbers and a phone script can be found here. It includes a link to phone numbers.

Toolkit 2. Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. You can find a model here.

Toolkit 3. Visit your senators’ offices. If you cannot get an appointment, hand deliver a letter. Our toolkit, which you can find here has a model to use, and directions to find local offices. If you cannot hand deliver it, send your letter in the mail.

When you go into the toolkits and commit to an action, we have a simple form that let’s us know what you did. As a thank you, you will receive a special badge for your Facebook page or Twitter account each time you complete an action, and you will be entered into our drawing for a copy of Reign of Error signed by Diane Ravitch.

The drawing will be held on January 5th,

Share this link on your Facebook page and Twitter account, or email it to a friend.
sorry this is late. There is still time to act. The DeVos hearing has been delayed by 1-2 days. 

Trump Appointment to Education - A Cause for Concern

Jeff Bryant

Donald Trump’s election to the US Presidency left education policy experts at a complete loss to explain what this would mean for the nation’s schools. During his campaign, Trump had given few clues about what would inform his education leadership, only that he had some antipathy for the US Department of Education, that he was no fan of Common Core, and that he would advocate for more “school choice.”

After his election, experienced education journalists at Education Weekpredicted Trump would embrace conservative Beltway think tanks and state education policy leaders who had bristled under the rule of Obama’s education department, and he would reject the influence of teachers unions, civil rights groups, and politically centrist education “reform” groups.

Many who pointed out “personnel is policy,” speculated Trump would pick an Education Secretary from the ranks of his transition advisers who came mostly from the above mentioned DC-based circles and state government centers. Other knowledgeable sources predicted Trump might draw education policy knowhow from “outsider” sources, such as the military, big business, or the charter school industry.

No one – not a single source I can find – anticipated Trump would look for education expertise in the deep, dark well he repeatedly seems to draw from – the extremist, rightwing evangelical community.

The DeVos Nomination

The first clue that Trump would embed the extremist views of radical Christian orthodoxy in the White House’s education policy apparatus was his nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the nation’s next Secretary of Education.

As Politico reports, DeVos is a “billionaire philanthropist” who “once compared her work in education reform to a biblical battleground where she wants to ‘advance God’s Kingdom.'”

An Open Letter to Betsy DeVos

Patrick Kearney, 

Dear Ms. DeVos,

I don’t think we’ve really met yet; we are America’s public school teachers. There are about 3.1 million of us. We teach in large urban areas, we teach in the suburbs, we teach in small rural communities, and we teach in some really remote parts of our country. The most important thing to recognize is that we teach every kid who shows up. We don’t pick and choose the types of kids that we will teach, we teach ALL of them.

Because we haven’t really had much interaction, we thought it might be nice to share a little bit about the public schools we teach in. First of all, we are very proud of our schools. Public schools today have the highest graduation rate in American history. The Gallup Poll says that the rate of parents who are satisfied with their public school is the highest in American history. We are also very proud that our public schools offer more services to students with low socioeconomic backgrounds and special education needs than ever before. Not to be redundant, but we are proud that we serve ALL of the students in our communities.

Our communities are very important to us. We are taxpayers in our local communities and many of us have children of our own who attend the public schools that we teach in. We care deeply that our schools are safe and that they are providing a rigorous and relevant curriculum to EVERY student who walks in the door. We recognize that each of our communities have different needs and sometimes get frustrated with a “one size fits all” mentality.

Betsy DeVos Would Dismantle Public Schools

By nominating Betsy DeVos for secretary of education, Donald Trump has shown he is serious about decimating public education.

For the last 30 years, DeVos has spent millions of her family fortune on a destructive mission to destroy public education and lobby for using taxpayer dollars for unregulated vouchers and for-profit charters without regard to quality. And just this morning, the Wall Street Journal broke news that the DeVos family is involved in a hedge fund that is making money off federal student loan debt.

National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and I have sent an open letter demanding that our secretary of education and every elected official respect and uphold the American vision of high-quality public schools for every single student.

We need your support. Add your name to the open letter right now.

It’s not surprising that Trump and DeVos, both billionaires who never attended or sent their children to public schools, fail to understand the importance of public education in fostering pluralism and opportunity—but it is deeply troubling.

Our public schools are the way the United States fulfills a collective promise: to take and teach every child seeking an education. Public education isn’t a partisan issue; 90 percent of American children attend public schools, and they deserve leaders who will strengthen those schools, not destabilize or defund them.

Sign this open letter demanding better for our children.

In 2000, DeVos and her husband bankrolled a multimillion-dollar ballot initiative to create school vouchers in Michigan, and voters overwhelmingly shot it down. DeVos then shifted her focus to the expansion of publicly funded but privately run charter schools.

Her push—and deep pockets—has resulted in an explosion in the number of for-profit charters in her home state, which now has the most in the nation. As a result, a yearlong investigation into two decades of charter school records was conducted, bringing to light the consequences of Michigan charter schools’ lack of oversight, transparency and accountability. And last spring, the DeVos family funded efforts to defeat a bill that would have placed both Detroit’s charter schools and its neighborhood public schools under the same oversight authority.
During his campaign, Trump proposed a $20 billion voucher plan to shift taxpayer dollars to private and religious schools. With DeVos at his side, this could easily become a reality. 

Stand up to Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos—and for public education—by adding your name to the open letter.

America has always prided itself on its promise to provide a high-quality public education to all students, regardless of where they live. We must reclaim that promise and stand up to those who wish to dismantle public education, which we have worked so hard to advance.

Start by adding your name to this open letter.

In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President

Trump : The Privatization of Public Schools

It is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools than Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump’s pick as the cabinet secretary overseeing the nation’s education system.

For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has pushed to give families taxpayer money in the form of vouchers to attend private and parochial schools, pressed to expand publicly funded but privately run charter schools, and tried to strip teacher unions of their influence.

A daughter of privilege, she also married into it; her husband, Dick, who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Michigan a decade ago, is heir to the Amway fortune. Like many education philanthropists, she argues that children’s ZIP codes should not confine them to failing schools.

But Ms. DeVos’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in her home state of Michigan and across the country have focused little on existing public schools, and almost entirely on establishing newer, more entrepreneurial models to compete with traditional schools for students and money. Her donations and advocacy go almost entirely toward groups seeking to move students and money away from what Mr. Trump calls “failing government schools.”

Conservative school choice activists hailed her on Wednesday as a fellow disrupter, and as someone who would block what they see as federal intrusion on local schools.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, where Ms. DeVos helped push legislation establishing tax credits for scholarships to private schools, called her an “outstanding pick,” a “passionate change agent to press for a new education vision.”

“Her allegiance is to families, particularly those struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder, not to an outdated public education model that has failed them from one generation to the next,” he wrote on Facebook.

Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, called Ms. DeVos a “smart, principled small-government conservative who’s experienced in politics and versed in the relevant policy.”

But to teachers’ unions, she is anathema.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, called Ms. DeVos “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee” since the secretary of education was elevated to the cabinet level four decades ago.