Feds give states more time to bolster struggling schools

While running for governor of MI in 2006, Dick DeVos ― whose wife, Betsy, is now President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for USA secretary of education ― said that schools should have the option of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution.

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for education secretary – is no stranger to IN politics or its education policy battlefield.

Noel Candelaria is president of the Texas State Teachers Association and a former special education teacher in the Ysleta Independent School District in El Paso.

Forget the school privatizers’ misleading catch phrase, that school choice is “the civil rights issue of our time”.

The group of teachers expressed their apprehensions over DeVos’ support of school vouchers, which many public educators vehemently oppose. Under the new regulations, states will get an additional year – until the 2018-19 school year – to identify those schools. The education secretary nominee is a fierce supporter of school vouchers, which allow students to use public funds in order to attend private schools. But if you’re not so well off, “If you’re in a failing school, you’re stuck there”. Consider this: DeVos is a fierce opponent to the public school system and has a substantive record for steering public funds away from them.

DeVos put it this way in a 2013 interview with Philanthropy Roundtable, an organization created to “foster excellence in philanthropy”.

“Public schools are not Sunday schools”, Kary L. Moss, executive director of the ACLU of MI, said in a 2006 statement. Because Trump is willing to take on the powerful education monopoly and the teachers union, and they know it. These vouchers are distributed to parents, often through random lotteries, giving them more options for where their children attend school.

“Public education is not a business”.

Laura Zorc, a new school board member in Indian River County, has no worries.

DeVos, a 58-year-old billionaire philanthropist from MI, leads the American Federation for Children, which promotes charter school education.

DeVos’s only experience is in pushing for so-called “school choice”.

Trump himself has proposed putting $20 billion toward federal spending for a grant program that would allow states to expand vouchers and charter schools. She’s married to Dick DeVos, an heir to the Amway fortune, and is the sister to Erik Prince, founder of notorious government-contracted security company Blackwater, now known as Academi.

Texans can’t afford two education systems, one public and one private.

“Trump stated that she is “a brilliant and passionate education advocate”, but her brand of passion is not that of preserving and protecting public education”, wrote a group protesting DeVos in St. Petersburg this week. As governor of Indiana, Pence succeeded in expanding the state’s voucher programs and increasing the number of charter schools in state.

Carole Jean Jordan, Indian River County’s tax collector, also is impressed by Trump’s pick. However, that observation is yet to be seen as the newly appointed secretary has yet to assume the position.

Stephanie White, executive director of Equality Michigan, said she believes that with McNeilly as an influence, DeVos’ views on LGBT issues have evolved. Yes, the American educational system is failing, but DeVos hardly seems like a prudent solution. Now conservatives are upset at Common Core and at too much testing, but their origin is really that obsession of “accountability” that accelerated under Jeb Bush. She has also served as Texas Director of Americans for Prosperity, and as Senior Policy Fellow for Education for AFP, and is now working with Texans for Education Opportunity, EdChoice and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “I think there’s an opportunity to ensure we are able to give multiple indicators to parents and legislators of what’s working in schools. We have plenty of evidence to demonstrate that this does not improve the quality of education overall and certainly harms the quality of education for those populations most vulnerable”. Lieberman was Democrat Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential election.