1/2/17

A spate of articles criticizing Trump’s choice of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education as hostile to public schools, a champion of ineffective and damaging market-based nostrums ,  an advocate of unlimited charter school expansion as the only hope way to improve education but a foe of charter school accountability,  and a supporter of vouchers including religious schools.

Jane Mayer author of Dark Money wrote a devastating short bio for the New Yorker, Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Big Donor Education Secretary    http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/betsy-devos-trumps-big-donor-education-secretary

The indomitable Jeff Bryant raises alarming questions stemming from DeVos’s track record in Michigan. http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/principles-to-guide-the-vetting-of-betsy-devos/

The New York Times posted an article, Free Market in Education; Economists Generally Don’t Buy It which rebuts DeVos’s strong devotion to market-based policies for public schools. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/upshot/free-market-for-education-economists-generally-dont-buy-it.html

Graham Vyse writing in The New Republic argues that to successfully resist Betsy DeVos’’s scary anti-public school policies  Democrats have to admit that the last eight years of Obama’s high-stakes, test-driven “reforms” have not worked and have caused considerable collateral damage as www.buildingbetterschools.com has been advocating. https://newrepublic.com/article/139071/can-democrats-save-public-schools-trump-devos

An editorial in the Salt Lake City Tribune debunks the market-based philosophy that Devos espouses http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/4756009-155/op-ed-trump-nominee-would-dismantle-American

An article by the respected Arthur Camins, Individual Choice Is No Substitute for Democracy http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-camins/individual-choice-is-no-s_b_12084020.html?  To quote Camins:The problem with publicly-funded charter schools goes far beyond the lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability. Most fundamentally, they are an assault on democracy. Individual choice is no substitute for democratic governance. In addition, they drain limited resources from remaining public schools, exacerbate racial and socio-economic isolation, and undermine public investment in socially responsible solutions for all in favor of “saving” a select few.

Lindsay Wagner, an educational reporter, describes the devastation of public education in North Carolina from five years of conservative Republic rule (which many Trumpians want to replicate in the nation). She wrote three articles, Starving the Schools, Losing Its Luster: the Teaching Profession is Battered from All Sides, and Paving the Way to Privatization; Lawmakers Embrace Charters and Vouchers but Not Accountability. http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NC-Policy-Watch-Altered-State-How-5-years-of-conservative-rule-have-redefined-north-carolina-december-2015.pdf  Betsy Devos lead the charge for similar destructive policies in Michigan.

In the same vein, Jeff Bryant blows the whistle on the damage caused to North Carolina public schools by out-of-state charter school management companies ripping off funds from public education. http://www.alternet.org/education/north-carolinas-charter-school-industry-slowly-gutting-public-education 

Mercedes Schneider reviews Truthout: The Great Unwinding of Public Education: Devos and Detroit by  Joseph Natoli which exposes the self-dealing and low-performance in Detroit’s charter schools. https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2016/12/25/truthout-the-great-unwinding-of-public-education-devos-and-detroit/

An article in Politico by Emma, Wermund, and Heflig,  DeVos’s Michigan School Experiment Gets Poor Grades http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-michigan-school-experiment-232399 raises troubling questions about her educational record and philosophy.

A news report by Allie Gross, Out of Options: School Choice Gutted Detroit’s Public Schools. The Rest of the Country Is Next. https://news.vice.com/story/school-choice-detroit-betsy-devos

Mitchell Robinson penned Privatize, Monetize, Weaponize: How the DeVos Family Devoured Michigan’s Schools. http://linkis.com/www.eclectablog.com/ax03r

Julian Heilig, Five Questions You Should Ask About Secretary of Education Nominee Betsy DeVos https://cloakinginequity.com/2016/12/06/five-questions-you-should-ask-about-secretary-of-education-nominee-betsy-devos/

John Thompson, a teacher and blogger from Oklahoma warns of the dangers of Devos-like policies had on that state. Comparable efforts to those enacted in Michigan (as well as Indiana and Louisiana) caused considerable harm. https://dianeravitch.net/2016/12/11/john-thompson-we-cant-let-betsy-devos-destroy-our-public-schools/

Robert Mann writing in New-Orleans Times-Picayune warns of the damage caused by Gov. Jindal’s policies which are the same as those DeVos advocates.  His article is entitled, Thanks to Bobby Jindal, we know how disastrous Trump’s education policies could be. http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2016/12/thanks_to_bobby_jindal_we_know.html

Jennifer Berkshire in Culture Warrior Princess exposes DeVos’s long history with rabid anti-homosexual causes and fringes of the Christian right. http://edushyster.com/culture-warrior-princess/

Finally, a summary of the conservative voices opposing her nomination as a big-money lobbyist indifferent to popular sentiment. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-conservative-argument-against-devos.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FORjvzd+%28CURMUDGUCATION%29