Trump Isn't The Only Swampy DC Crook On The Wrong Side Of The Law-- Remember Betsy DeVos?

Adam Minsky, reporting for Forbes wrote this week that "A federal judge has tacitly threatened Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos with jail for her ongoing failure (or refusal) to comply with court orders in a student loan case. By way of background, in 2016 the Obama administration finalized rules for the Borrower Defense to Repayment program. This program was created to allow federal student loan borrowers to request loan forgiveness on the basis that their school engaged in unfair, deceptive, or illegal practices. When DeVos took over the U.S. Department of Education in 2017, she stopped processing Borrower Defense applications, and ordered the department to rewrite the rules governing the program, effectively gutting it." Welcome to Trump World.

Consumer advocates filed suit against her and the Department, and they won. As part of the 2018 court ruling on the collapse of for-profit college chain Corinthian Colleges, the federal judge ordered DeVos and the Department of Education to cease all collections activities on federal student loans used to attend Corinthian schools, given that they would likely be eligible for discharge under Borrower Defense to Repayment.

DeVos ignored the ruling, and the Department of Education continued to pursue defaulted former Corinthian students. The Department continued to garnish people's wages and intercept their federal tax refunds, depriving them of critical sources of income in direct violation of the 2018 court order.

This year, consumer advocates took DeVos back to court for the violations. The federal judge was not happy, saying she was "astounded" at the Department's ongoing violations of her very clear court order. "At best it is gross negligence, at worst it’s an intentional flouting of my order," said U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim. “I’m not sending anyone to jail yet, but it’s good to know I have that ability," she said.

An attorney for the Department of Education told Judge Kim that they would comply with the original court order. In the meantime, the Department has finalized a second rewrite of the Borrower Defense to Repayment rules, which would-- again-- significantly weaken the program.

The Trumpist Regime has accused Congress of not doing the peoples' business and only concentrating on impeachment. That's just a baseless talking point. Two of the most ardent impeachment advocates, congressmen Andy Levin (D-MI) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) have been hard at work holding Trump's Department of Education accountable. Levin is the vice chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Raskin is the chair of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Monday they sent a letter to DeVos letting her know that her department’s efforts to censor viewpoints that are critical of its work are being noted by Congress. Earlier this year the House passed legislation that included a provision authored by Congressman Levin to allocate $4 million to the Department of Education watchdog office that conducts nonpartisan oversight and investigations of the agency. This is the letter they sent DeVos. If you like it please let Levin and Raskin know by sending each a token of your appreciation by clicking here.

Dear Secretary DeVos:

We write to express our serious concerns regarding actions you have taken to restrict the free expression of ideas at the Department of Education and in institutions of higher education across the country. We detail below the specific troubling actions that have prompted this request. Additionally, we respectfully request certain documents, described below, so that we may undertake necessary oversight of the Department’s activities.

Censorship of Critical Viewpoints on the Department’s Internal Network

We are concerned about your efforts to censor viewpoints that are critical of the Department’s policies. News reports earlier this year revealed that the Department had blocked from its internal network the website of Public Citizen, a non-profit advocacy organization that has opposed many of your policies. It has challenged the Department’s improper administration of the TEACH Grant program, criticized your failure to protect student borrowers’ rights, and brought litigation to stop regulatory rollbacks that benefit predatory schools.

After Public Citizen challenged your policies, you blocked Department of Education employees from accessing the Public Citizen website-- and, by extension, its ideas-- on the Department’s internal network. Although the Department has now restored access to this website, it only did so in the face of a lawsuit. We are concerned that the Department may be blocking other websites on its internal network.

Threatening Public Institutions

On March 20, 2019, President Trump issued Executive Order 13864 (EO 13864), which purportedly seeks to promote “free inquiry” on college and university campuses by threatening to withhold certain federal funds. However, it is clear from his remarks at the signing ceremony (alleging that schools prevent conservative students from challenging “rigid, far-left ideology”) and tweets containing explicit threats against schools like University of California Berkeley, that the President views EO 13864 not as an instrument of free speech but as a tool to punish institutions with whom he disagrees.

Of course, problems of free speech on college campuses are complex and require creative solutions, and bigoted, far-right speakers have repeatedly tested the free speech policies of Berkeley and other universities. However, the President’s Executive Order does not even attempt to offer a thoughtful solution to the complex civil and constitutional challenges that institutions of higher education face. On the contrary, his threats against institutions that he perceives as political opponents undermine First Amendment values. Additionally, his selective application of the Executive Order to institutions he regards as political enemies suggests that his political allies are free to violate constitutional norms, so long as they do so in defense of the President.

Ignoring Political Allies Who Censor Students

You stated that “we are inundated daily with stories of administrators and faculty manipulating the marketplaces of ideas.” Unfortunately, despite Executive Order 13864, which directs the Department to ensure institutions promote free inquiry, you have failed to act in cases of suppression of ideas that involve the administration’s political allies, such as Liberty University.

For example, when Liberty University’s student code of conduct was leaked, detailing extreme restrictions on student free speech and association rights, the Department of Education did not act. Liberty reportedly bans LGBTQ relationships and places content restrictions on media students can view. Additionally, Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and advisor to President Trump, personally censors students. In one case, he blocked a student-written column, criticizing then-candidate Trump for boasting of sexually assaulting women, from being published in a student-run newspaper.

Mr. Falwell’s censorship and Liberty’s code of conduct facially violate existing Title IX guidance and President Trump’s executive order. Given that Liberty’s violations are public and longstanding, we are left to conclude that the Department’s failure to act is deliberate and that it is only interested in enforcing free speech policies against institutions it deems unfriendly.

Request for Information

We are extremely concerned by this administration’s efforts to intimidate world-renowned institutions and chill the free expression of ideas under the guise of upholding the First Amendment. In order to conduct the appropriate oversight of the Department’s activities, we respectfully request the following information no later than October 21, 2019:

1- All Office of General Counsel memoranda regarding the Department’s policies and/or authority to limit or block access to websites on its internal agency network;

2- A list of every website that the Department has limited or blocked access to on its internal network at any point, for any length of time, since January 20, 2017;

3- All Office of General Counsel memoranda related to the Department’s authority to investigate any and all violations of the First Amendment or Executive Order 13864;

4- Documentation sufficient to show the Department’s process for evaluating and investigating claims of violations of the First Amendment or Executive Order 13864;

5- Documentation sufficient to show the conclusions of any investigations into institutions of higher education due to First Amendment violations or violations of Executive Order 13864; and

6- A list of any and all investigations into claims of violations of the First Amendment or Executive Order 13864 that have been initiated but not yet completed.

Yesterday, Michigan state Rep. Jon Hoadley-- who tangled with DeVos, much to her detriment, before Trump recruited her-- sent out an e-mail to his supporters reminding them that she's "an embarrassment to the state of Michigan and to this country. DeVos needs to resign, immediately. Our campaign is seeking petition signers, to demand that DeVos be removed from her position. Because our campaign believes that victims of fraud shouldn’t pay for the assailant’s crimes. More than 160,000 students were conned into taking on large loans from Corinthian University-- a for-profit school that filed for bankruptcy after a federal investigation found widespread fraud and deception. These students should have had their debt canceled as part of a federal loan relief program for students defrauded by predatory schools like Corinthian University. But DeVos and her Department of Education were relentlessly shaking down students, forcing them to sue the department for relief. Predatory debt collection is disgusting. And a federal judge agreed, ordering DeVos to grant loan forgiveness. But what did DeVos do? She simply ignored the order and kept on collecting. The judge is livid. And rightfully so. This is just the latest in a long line of atrocious decisions from DeVos, ones that put students last and her own special interests first. This time, she has gone too far. The judge presiding over the case said, 'At best, it is gross negligence. At worst, it’s intentional flouting of my order.' adding, 'There have to be consequences for violation of my order sixteen thousand times.'" Jon is a candidate for Congress now and has been endorsed by Blue America. If you'd like to, you can contribute to his campaign to his campaign by clicking on the 2020 congressional thermometer below.

You can also contribute to the campaign of Flagstaff, Arizona progressive Eva Putzova at the same thermometer. Eva needs no reminding about who DeVos is and what damage she's causing. "The Trump-DeVos regime's efforts to punish educational institutions which allow speech critical of the President by threatening to withdraw federal funds is not surprising," she told us earlier. "I support a broad definition of free speech inside and outside of the classroom, whether that speech supports the President or not! We live in a democracy, not a dictatorship."

Chicago progressive candidate Robert Emmons told us that "Predatory operations like Trump 'University' and Corinthian 'College' have been preying on our nation’s young people for far too long. They put profit over progress. Safety nets like the federal Borrow Defense to Repayment program are the only protection that the victims of predatory institutions have against greed. In our country it is already expensive to be poor. DeVos and the Trump administration are making this reality even more clear. Young people, seeking a credited education, deserve to do so without fear of being bamboozled for profit. DeVos, neither you, your minions, or your twisted boss deserve to lead our path towards building strong educational institutions. Do right by our students or you will pay the price either by force through the legal system, or by failing our country once again."

Brianna Wu is the progressive candidate running for the Boston area seat occupied by reactionary New Dem Stephen Lynch. "School," she wrote this morning, "is not just about what you learn in books. It’s about the people you meet, and the different life experiences you are exposed to. To me, what is so dangerous about DeVos is she doesn’t seem to value the potential public schools have to bind communities together. DeVos’s vision for American education is clear. Privatize everything in sight, funnel public tax dollars to corporations, and remove protections that allow disadvantaged students to get an education. It’s appalling, and it’s fundamentally un-American."

 

Too Late To Stop Betsy DeVos?

Tomorrow's the day. The full Senate will vote on Trump's nominee to destroy the American education system, crackpot Republican billionaire Betsy DeVos. Frequent DWT commenter, Hone, a retired school psychologist, told me she spent Friday at a teachers' union headquarters in upstate New York calling Republican Senate offices about DeVos. I told her that the only possible Republican who could be swayed was Nevada's Dean Heller, who lives in a swing state and is up for reelection in 2018. Hone, though, spent most of her time calling Thom Tillis' various offices trying to communicate the message about DeVos' unsuitability. I told her she was probably wasting her time. But as of yesterday, Tillis was actually claiming he was still undecided and wanted to hear from his constituents. His numbers, by the way, are (919) 856-4630 and (202) 224-6342.

Fortunately there was no need for Hone to call centrist New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan, someone who has supported some Trump nominees but wrote an OpEd in the NY Times Friday explaining why she's voting against DeVos today. It's pretty heavy-- particularly coming right on top of hypocritical Republican congressmembers defending their move to obliterate a rule preventing severely mentally disabled people from buying guns. The Republicans whined to the media about protecting the rights of the handicapped, not exactly something we ever hear from the GOP these days.

Our nation recognized early in its history that public education is a necessary foundation for a democracy. It’s critical that we continue to support a strong public education system that prepares our young people, all of them, to participate in our democracy and compete on a fair footing in the work force.

For this reason, our public officials should share a reverence for the importance of public education to our country’s success, both now and in the future. And they must show a commitment to enforcing our laws so that all students have the opportunity to succeed.

That is why I oppose President Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. Throughout her confirmation process, Ms. DeVos has demonstrated a complete lack of experience in, knowledge of and support for public education. Instead, it is clear that she would pursue policies that would undermine public schools, in my home state of New Hampshire and across our nation.

At her nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last month, I questioned Ms. DeVos on whether she would enforce the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the law that ensures that all students receive a free and full education in our schools. Not only did Ms. DeVos decline to assure senators that she would enforce the law to protect students with disabilities, but she also demonstrated her confusion about whether the I.D.E.A. is a federal law.

Ensuring access to public education for every student is an issue that is personal to my family. My adult son Ben was born with cerebral palsy. Ben is bright and funny (and quite handsome, according to this unbiased source). He cannot walk, cannot use his fingers to type and can speak only in difficult-to-understand single words.

If Ben had been born a generation or two earlier, we, his parents, would have been pressured to put him in an institution. But Ben was able to go to a public school in his hometown, Exeter, N.H., because of the tireless work of the advocates, educators and public officials who came before us.

Ben had the opportunity to go to school and make friends in his own community-- something that all parents want for their children. And I was drawn to public service to ensure that all children have the same opportunities that Ben did.

Instead of supporting public schools, Ms. DeVos has supported voucher systems that divert taxpayer dollars to private, religious and for-profit schools without requirements for accountability. Voucher systems often fail to serve children who have disabilities. To use a voucher, families are sometimes forced to sign away their child’s legal rights, and the schools receiving the voucher often lack the experience or resources necessary to educate the child.

This is in sharp contrast to public school systems that focus on serving all students, including those with disabilities. In these public schools, educators are better prepared to recognize challenges faced by all students-- not just those who have a diagnosed disability-- and are empowered to tailor educational experiences to individual students.

That is the wonder of a public education system that reinforces the principle that every student counts. Too often, though, the voucher programs that Ms. DeVos advocates leave out students whose families cannot afford to pay the part of the tuition that the voucher does not cover; the programs also leave behind students with disabilities because the schools do not accommodate their complex needs.

I am also concerned about the number of unresolved conflicts of interest regarding Ms. DeVos’s finances, which call into question whether she will put America’s students before her own financial interests. Ms. DeVos has invested in numerous companies in the education sphere, and she has failed to answer basic questions about her finances, including which companies she would stay invested in if she is confirmed.

I will always fight to improve our public education system and ensure that all students have the opportunity to reach their full potential. This week, I voted against moving forward with Ms. DeVos’s nomination in committee, and I will vote against her nomination again on the Senate floor.

Thousands of my constituents have called my office about this nomination, and nearly all have voiced concerns that Ms. DeVos is completely unqualified to serve as secretary of education. Two of my Republican colleagues have also announced their opposition. This leaves just one more vote needed to defeat her nomination.

I hope there is another senator willing to break with the president and vote against this woefully unqualified nominee. We must listen to the thousands speaking up for our children and the public education system that serves all Americans.

The Washington Post described grassroots reaction to DeVos' nomination as a "groundswell of opposition" and over the weekend the whole country saw her portrayed as a clod on Saturday Night Live in a performance that closely mirrored her own jaw-dropping testimony before the Senate. Editorial boards across the country have urged her rejection. Even the Republican Chicago Tribune summed her up as representing all that is wrong with the charter movement. "DeVos," they wrote over the weekend, "is woefully unqualified and unprepared to lead the Education Department. DeVos has no direct experience at any level of public education. Her only true experience is using her family wealth to influence legislation aimed at expanding and protecting charter and voucher schools in Michigan and across the country. She brings the flaws of the charter/voucher movement into clear focus... [T]here is the lack of any transparency with respect to how tax dollars are used in charter/voucher schools. Taxpayers deserve to know how sponsors of charter/voucher schools are taking profit or using tax dollars for nonschool church purposes versus educating kids. Here again, DeVos has financially influenced decisions to avoid such transparency. No legislator or government official should falsely preach against the effectiveness of public education, reject responsibility for making all schools effective or endorse the use of tax dollars while avoiding accountability and transparency and visiting financial harm on existing public schools."

The intensity of opposition to DeVos seems greater than even the opposition to Scott Pruitt (EPA), Jeff Sessions (Justice) and Steve Mnuchin (Treasury), widely seen as his three worst appoints aside from her. Politico outlined the quixotic, furious last minute bid to sink the nomination.

Teachers unions, civil rights advocates and a ragtag assemblage of other opponents are bombarding congressional offices with tens of thousands of phone calls and more than 1 million emails-- a massive but almost certainly doomed effort to vanquish one of President Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks.

Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, said on Twitter that the last three days had “been the busiest in Capitol switchboard history” by “almost double.” He urged opponents of DeVos to “keep it up.”

The campaign kicked into high gear this week after two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, announced their opposition, leaving the charter schools advocate hanging by a 50-50 thread. Just one more “no” vote and DeVos is done-- a prospect that seems tantalizingly close for Democrats but that GOP leaders say they’re confident won’t happen.

Author Stephen King, a Maine resident, tweeted to his 2.8 million followers: “Thanks to Susan Collins for saying ‘No’ on Betsy DeVos. Notice that it's possible to be a good Republican and still say no to Donald Trump.”

Trump doesn't even know her; she was Pence's pick. When Trump ran into her at event the other day, he seemed unsure of who she was and eventually said, in front of reporters, "You're the education lady, right?" Pence will have break the Senate tie tomorrow-- unless one good Republican is found to vote against her (or even just disappear for the day). Spicer claims the Regime is "100% confident" she'll be confirmed.

Teachers unions, who have long warred with DeVos over her support of charter school expansion and using taxpayer money for vouchers, among other things, are continuing to mobilize hundreds of thousands of their members across the country to call lawmakers.

The country’s largest union, the National Education Association, says it has organized more than 80,000 phone calls and more than 1.1 million emails in the past four weeks.

But the opposition to DeVos mushroomed into something bigger after clips from her bumpy confirmation hearing exploded across social media, reinforcing questions about her qualifications for the job and turning the nominee into a punchline on late night television.

“Betsy DeVos teaches us that if you're born rich, never go to public schools, and hate public schools, someday you can run public schools,” tweeted comedian Mike Birbiglia.

Union organizers say that although they are still campaigning against DeVos, a good deal of the backlash comes from the general public. And they anticipate those efforts would increase over the weekend as activists share lawmakers’ phone numbers on Facebook and Twitter.

“This has become such a high-profile fight for our education system that there will no doubt be an enormous amount of activism over the weekend,” said Mary Kusler, senior director of the Center for Advocacy at the NEA.

Parent groups have become soldiers in the cause, incensed that DeVos has never been a teacher or school administrator and fearful she will put their children's education at risk.

Deena Mitchell, a parent activist in Anchorage, said she is disturbed by Devos' "absolute lack of experience for this job."

“I think anyone who makes a comment that public education is a ‘dead end’ doesn’t fundamentally believe that public education is the bedrock of our democracy,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell and her group, Great Alaska Schools, cheered Murkowski's decision to oppose DeVos. This weekend, they’re organizing “a tie-breaker telethon,” collecting comments to deliver to their other senator, Dan Sullivan, who has said he’ll vote to confirm her.

The push against DeVos has also sparked some unlikely alliances.

Billionaire philanthropist and education reformer Eli Broad, a Democrat who has donated to both parties and pushed for charter school expansion, penned a letter this week urging the Senate to reject DeVos.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who is usually on the opposite side from Broad, shares his position on DeVos. Education secretary nominees are usually given great deference by both parties, she said. But “DeVos breaks the mold.”

This has been circulating on Social Media this week, meant, primarily as a description of Trump, of course, but it seems to fit DeVos perfectly as well as the whole kakistocracy:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.

Betsy DeVos-- The End Of American Public Education

It's all over, suckers

I've been in a state of denial since November 9 but Trump's appointment of Betsy DeVos yesterday snapped me right out of it. Sure, Trump hired an actual neo-Nazi as virtual co-Chief of Staff. And no matter how many times the clueless shills on Morning Joe try to assure everyone that Trump won't be governing the way he ran his vile campaign and that everything is back to normal and he'll have a fine cabinet, it just ain't so. The only thing I've heard positive about yesterday's announcement about Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary is that her appointment will clarify the battle lines. DeVos is another extremist billionaire whose life's work has been to destroy public education. Originally a huge Common Core advocate, her real goal is always to destroy teachers unions and voucherize and profitize education. (Incidentally, her brother is Erik Prince, founder of the worst of the American-based mercenary firms, Blackwater, privatizing war.) Annette Taddeo, former Democratic Party chair of Miami-Dade County, and currently a candidate for Florida Democratic Party chair now, was dismayed by Trump's appointment yesterday. "In Florida with Governor Scott's massive cuts to public education," she told us, "I thought we had reached rock bottom, but it seems there is a new bottom with Trumps nomination of DeVos."

The first person I called was my old friend Bertis Downs, probably best known as REM's manager, but also as a dedicated public school education activist in Georgia and a board member of the Network for Public Education. "So," he morosely quipped on the phone just after the news broke, "I guess now our American public schools will all be more like AmWay, I mean what could possibly go wrong!?" He sobered up fast:

But seriously, people don’t want the false cures pushed by corporate reformers and they prove that time and again, in statewide votes like the recent ones in Massachusetts, Washington state and Georgia. This is one of the rare issues that crosses party lines: parents and communities, regardless of their politics or parties, support their local schools and want to see them succeed. Republicans who support public schools-- and there are lots of them-- that is who needs to speak up and out about this appointment. If not, we really could be seeing the abandonment of our nation’s historic commitment to educating everybody-- public education as the great equalizer and perpetual engine of opportunity. People are wise enough to know that "choice" doesn’t educate kids-- teachers do and parents do-- schools do. And to the extent that the federal government has a role, it is to supplement and encourage our public schools, and the equality of opportunity within them-- not to destroy them by putting them into the hands of politicians and their cronies.

Bertis asked me to reach out to Carol Burris, head of the Network for Public Education and New York's 2013 New York State High School Principal of the Year. She told me that the DeVos pick makes one thing clear-- it shows Trump's commitment to the privatization of public schools as I wrote about here. DeVos wants all children to have vouchers, and she opposes regulations and oversight. Betsy DeVos spent over 1 million dollar to successfully block the effort of the Michigan legislature to clean up the mess of for-profit, unregulated charters in the state. The majority of Americans do not want what DeVos is selling. They do not want the Chilean education system of right wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet. They want community schools where they, not moneymakers, have voice. I have no doubt that the pushback on charters, vouchers and privatization will be enormous. The veil over so-called ed reform is now off."

"Trump," she had written for the Washington Post just last Sunday, "had little to say about education during the campaign, but that does not mean that he and those who surround him do not have a plan. There are clear indications that President Obama’s Race to the Top will be replaced with something that could be called 'Race to the Bank,' as the movement to privatize education seems certain to accelerate under an administration run by Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence." And the first concrete conformation was the appointment of DeVos.

Trump’s disdain for public schools is apparent. The Trump/Pence website uses the adjective “government” instead of  “public” when referring to community schools. It claims that school choice is “the civil rights issue of our time.”

Donald Trump Jr. used the convention as an opportunity to denigrate public schools by comparing them to “Soviet-era department stores that are run for the benefit of the clerks and not the customers.” Trump Jr.’s rhetoric belongs to a long-standing, right-wing belief that public education is a socialist institution and that schools should be run by the private sector.

Let’s stop for a moment and think about the “government” that runs public schools. It is not, as the slogan implies, a Washington cabal. Except in those cases where mayors have grabbed control, public schools are governed by locally elected school boards. The origin of the school board dates to 1647, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony required every town to establish a public school. Committees of school governance sprang up, becoming autonomous, local governing boards as early as the 1820s.

Nearly all school board members serve without pay. Most are dedicated, locally elected community servants who must abide by strict laws regarding conflict of interest-- laws from which many corporate charter boards are exempt. Yet school boards are viewed as an impediment by billionaires, like Reed Hastings of Netflix, who argued that school boards should be replaced with corporate boards through charter expansion.

The elimination of democratically governed schools is the true agenda of those who embrace choice. The talk of “civil rights” is smoke and mirrors to distract.

The plan on the Trump-Pence website promotes redirecting $20 billion in federal funds from local school districts and instead having those dollars follow the child to the school of their choice-- private, charter or public. States that have laws promoting vouchers and charters would be “favored” in the distribution of grants. Like Obama’s Race the Top, the competition for federal funds that states could enter by promising to follow Obama-preferred reforms, a Trump plan could use financial incentives to impose a federal vision on states.

The idea is not novel. Market-based reformers have referred to this for years as “Pell Grants for kids,” or portability of funding.

Portability, vouchers and charter schools have been hallmarks of Pence’s education policy as governor of Indiana. Unlike the Trump-Pence website, which frames choice as a “civil rights” initiative, Governor Pence did not limit vouchers to low-income families. He expanded it to middle-income families and removed the cap on the number of students who can apply.

It was promised that vouchers would result in savings, which then would be redistributed to public schools. What resulted, however, was an unfunded mandate. The voucher program produced huge school spending deficits for the state-- a $53 million funding hole during the 2015-16 school year alone. That deficit continues to grow.

The “money follows the student” policy has not only hurt Indiana’s public urban schools, it has also devastated community public schools in rural areas-- 63 districts in the Small and Rural Schools Association of Indiana have seen funding reduced, resulting in the possible shutdown of some, even after services to kids are cut to the bone.

In contrast, charters have thrived in Indiana with Pence’s initiatives of taxpayer-funded, low-interest loan, and per-pupil funding for nonacademic expenses. For-profit, not-for-profit and virtual schools are allowed. Scams, cheating scandals and political payback have thrived, as well. Former Indiana education commissioner Tony Bennett was forced to resign as the commissioner of Florida after it was discovered that he had manipulated school rating standards to save an Indiana charter school operated by a big Republican donor who gave generously to Bennett’s campaign.

Two nations, Chile and Sweden, fully implemented school choice. Both countries were influenced by the school privatization and choice theory of Milton and Rose Friedman, which is embraced by the incoming administration.

Chile’s choice system, imposed by dictator Augusto Pinochet, created a subsidized private school system in which schools could be run for profit. Chileans choose among elite private schools; public schools; and voucher schools, which are government-subsidized privates; and corporate schools, which are similar to American charters. Nearly all upper- and middle-class children attend private, corporate or voucher schools, leaving only the poor behind in the public schools. By 2011, Chile ranked 64 out of 65 in segregation across social classes in its schools and colleges.

The post-Pinochet government is banning for-profit schools, tuition and test-in criteria to try to fix the deep inequality caused by privatization, but progress is slow. Putting a public school system back together when it has been systematically disassembled is no easy task.

In the late 1990s, Sweden also embarked on a course of privatization as the driver of school reform. By 2011, the country went into “PISA shock” because Sweden was the only OECD nation to see its scores decline every time PISA was given since the international test began in 2000. Sam Abrams’s book Education and the Commercial Mindset describes Swedish scandals and bankruptcies, grade inflation due to school marketing, higher costs, and increased segregation by social class caused by privatization. As in the case of Chile, only the neediest children were left in some of Sweden’s municipal schools.

Both nations show us the outcome of choice. Americans need to consider some tough questions, before embracing its allure.

Do we want our schools to be governed by our neighbors whom we elect to school boards, or do we want our children’s education governed by corporations that have no real accountability to the families they serve?

Do we to want to build our communities, or fracture them, as neighborhood kids get on different buses to attend voucher schools, or are forced to go to charters because their community public school is now the place that only those without options go?

Do we believe in a community of learners in which kids learn from and with others of different backgrounds, or do we want American schools to become further segregated by race, income and religion?

The most shocking instances of charter school scandal and fraud consistently appear in states that have embraced the choice “market” philosophy. Are we willing to watch our tax dollars wasted, as scam artists and profiteers cash in?

When it comes to improving education, we have been engaged in work avoidance for too long. Rather than putting our efforts into creating better, safer and more diverse neighborhoods with excellent schools, we have pretended that the marketplace offers the only solution. We gave up the dream. And the privatizers and billionaires who dismiss democracy as an annoyance cynically jumped in.

True community public schools cannot survive school choice. There are only two paths. Will we choose the path chosen by a Chilean dictator, or will we rebuild and nurture a system with deep roots in American tradition and idealism?

OK, let's boil this down to a short version: redirecting federal funds toward school vouchers and privatization will lead to wealthy investors turning schools into profit centers for themselves, sort of like the catastrophe of private prisons, but a million times more destructive to what's left of America. Overly dramatic? We'll see. As for the DeVos family... it doesn't get any worse than these crackpot religious fanatics.

The DeVos family has thrown millions of dollars behind the causes and politicians they support. That means financing Senate races across the country involving vulnerable Republicans who support their issues; funding crisis pregnancy centers that lie to patients about abortion and other health concerns; fighting against marriage equality; and lining up support for so-called religious liberties measures.

...“Over the course of 2015, no family in conservative politics donated more hard dollars to political campaigns than the DeVoses,” reported Swan and Neidig [of The Hill]. Richard DeVos, the family’s billionaire patriarch, built his fortune as a co-founder of direct-selling franchise Amway; he is also the owner of the NBA’s Orlando Magic team. “An analysis by The Hill shows that members of the DeVos family donated $964,000 in hard dollars to Senate and House campaigns and to Republican Party committees at both the state and national level. This spending easily surpasses the $97,000 in hard dollars from the Koch family and $72,000 from the Coorses-- two other major conservative donor families.”

The DeVoses’ commitment to the Republican Party runs deep. Among their numerous political ties, Richard DeVos acted as the finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in the 1980s; Betsy DeVos, who is married to Richard’s son Dick DeVos, was the chair of the Michigan Republican Party and finance chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and her husband Dick took on a self-funded failed gubernatorial bid in Michigan in 2006 that cost the family more than $35 million.

...Much of the DeVos family’s donations have gone toward helping to fund the politicians and the conservative organizations behind anti-choice and other conservative measures in their home state of Michigan. “With donations to state legislators and Gov. Rick Snyder, the DeVos family-- via the Michigan Family Forum and Michigan Right to Life, which they help to fund-- were able to pass Michigan’s ‘rape insurance’ law, requiring women to buy a separate insurance rider for abortion to be covered, even in cases of rape and incest,” explained NARAL Pro-Choice America in a 2015 memo, referring to the 2013 Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act.

Michigan's preeminent progressive blog, ElectaBlog, has plenty of experience covering all things DeVos. Yesterday, right after the announcement, Mitchell Robinsion, an associate professor and chair of music education at Michigan State University, made it clear that while if "Trump's plan to turn the US into a giant flea market, selling off the bits and pieces of a once great nation for parts to the highest bidders" is going to be successful, he's found in DeVos a real pro in the game. Betsy DeVos was the absolute worst possible choice for Secretary of Education, so it’s no surprise that Trump chose her for this cabinet post... DeVos," wrote Robinson, "has been busy dreaming up new ways to capitalize on the billions of taxpayer dollars currently being wasted on children, teachers, and schools, and helping her puppet in the Michigan governor’s residence with his plan to destroy the state’s schools."

Remember, Michigan is the state where the Governor poisoned the water in one of the city’s largest cities, and more than 400 days later has still refused to replace a single water pipe. And the state whose lawyers recently claimed-- and I swear I’m not making this up-- that the state’s children had no “fundamental right to literacy.”

This is Betsy DeVos’ and Rick Snyder’s dream for how a state should govern-- that a state and its elected officials have no responsibility to provide clean drinking water or a quality education for its children. It’s a dystopian vision of the future that absolves a state’s leaders and institutions from providing, maintaining, repairing, and supporting its schools, roads, water systems, and infrastructure, or protecting its most vulnerable citizens from the permanent damage caused by a poisoned water supply.

So, if you want to know what our new federal education policy is going to look like under Secretary DeVos, what has happened in Michigan under Gov. Snyder-- and bankrolled and supported by the DeVos family-- provides perhaps the best example of what to expect…

Snyder’s “skunk works” plan was a furtive, secretive, and unconstitutional effort to turn Michigan’s schools into a virtual bonanza for profiteers. As originally reported by Chad Livengood, here’s what Snyder–and DeVos–were doing:

The education reform advisory team has dubbed itself a “skunk works” project working outside of the government bureaucracy and education establishment with a goal of creating a “value school” that costs $5,000 per child annually to operate, according to meeting minutes and reports obtained by the Detroit News.…Records show the group has strived to remain secretive, even adopting the “skunk works” alias, which dates to defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s secret development of fighter planes during World War II….In January, participants were instructed in a memo to use “alternative” email accounts.

The idea behind the “skunk works” plan was to radically increase the use of technology (i.e., virtual charters, online classes) to dramatically reduce the number of teachers needed, and to decouple tax dollars from schools by providing every student in the state with an “education debit card” that could be used for a wide range of educational experiences (i.e., music lessons, art classes, sports teams).

The ultimate goal here was to create a new “value school” model in the state, delivering schooling at a per-student cost of roughly $5000, over $2000 less than the average reimbursement provided by the state for each child enrolled in a district’s schools-- with “edupreneurs” pocketing the balance. For Snyder and DeVos, the purpose of education is not to help develop a more informed and educated citizenry, or to help children to become more fully human by providing a comprehensive, high quality curriculum, including music, art, and physical education in addition to the rest of the disciplines. The purpose of education under Snyder and DeVos is to turn the state’s once excellent system of public schools into an educational WalMart, boasting “low, low prices” in place of quality instruction.

...Betsy DeVos’ mission is no less than the total destruction of public education. Her apparent support for charters is merely a head fake to the right to distract us from for her ultimate goal of “decoupling” state and federal dollars from supporting schools of any type.

Under Secretary of Education DeVos we will see the emergence of a two-tiered educational system:

One, a system of elite private and religious schools for well-to-do, mostly White parents with the means to afford expensive tuition payments, staffed by qualified, certified teachers, with a rich curriculum based on face-to-face instruction in clean, safe, well-maintained schools…

The other, a parallel system of “fly by night” virtual and online “schools” that open and close seemingly at random, and for-profit charters operated by scam artists like Northern Michigan’s Dr. Steve Ingersoll, with little to no state or federal regulation or oversight, and a bare bones, “back to the basics” curriculum delivered by unqualified and uncertified “teachers.”

I’m guessing that the leadership at Teach for America is practically salivating today.

For the rest of us, welcome to the Hunger Games of public education.

Is there a public response to this kind of catastrophic decision? The Senate will have to confirm or reject the nomination. I'm sure they're trying to work it out among themselves,although Republicans seem quite enthusiastic. We contacted Madison congressman Mark Pocan, a strong advocate for a healthy and vibrant public education system as a means to give children of all backgrounds an opportunity to achieve their potential. He looked at Trump's announcement yesterday with what appeared to me to be a combination of alarm and revision. "Maybe the only thing worse than taking money away from public schools," he told us, "is being a rich GOP donor who wants to take money away from your public schools. Betsy DeVos has funded efforts across the country and in my state of Wisconsin to elect politicians who will take funds from public schools and give them to private ones. Her record on education is about as wrong as you can get."

Cantor's Young Guns PAC Takes Aim At Extremists-- Republican Extremists

Eric Cantor can't seem to get anything right this election cycle (other than knowing with great certainty that Steve Israel will never allow the DCCC to fund a campaign against him). He may have been forced to stop targeting House Republican incumbents for political extinction but now his illegally coordinated Young Guns operation, the YG Action Fund, a SuperPAC, is fighting to protect moderate Republican Senator Dick Lugar from surging right-wing extremist Richard Mourlock.

Last week it was reported that Cantor's operatives had sent out the mailer (above) calling on Democrats and independents to vote in the Republican primary in order to save Lugar's hide. Republican voters are sick of him and the only chance he has would be for independents and Dems to realize how much worse Mourdock and the morlocks would be. Club for Growth, one of the extreme right groups working to retire Lugar, is furious at Cantor:

“Regrettably, Eric Cantor’s actions confirm the worst of what grassroots conservatives dislike about a Washington Republican leadership that is more interested in protecting its own than in promoting conservative principles and candidates.”

But there's something even worse in Cantor's messaging about Lugar vs the Mourlocks. As Jonathan Allen reported yesterday, Cantor is hitting Mourdock for "among other things, wanting to eliminate the Department of Education-- a position that many of Cantor’s House Republican colleagues share. And that Democrats routinely use to beat House Republicans over the head with.

For starters, there’s the whole crew that voted to adopt the 1995 Newt Gingrich budget that assumed the elimination of the departments of Energy, Commerce and … Education. That includes current Speaker John Boehner, Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who was chairman of the House Budget Committee that year.

While Boehner, Camp and Rogers have never had to worry about that vote coming back to haunt them – they’re in very safe districts – the Young Guns’ argument could easily be turned on House GOP candidates in tougher districts, including Jesse Kelly who is running to succeed former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), Rep. Charlie Bass (R-N.H.), who voted for the 1995 budget, Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), Frank Guinta (R-N.H.), Allen West (R-Fla.) and others.

We spoke to some of our Blue America candidates who have been campaigning the most vigorously on education matters. Carol Shea-Porter is running against a fringe teabgger as radical and extreme as Mourdock and she picked right up on Cantor's tactic.

"A Republican Super PAC run by those close to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is attacking a Republican candidate's call to abolish the Department of Education as too 'extreme.' The Young Guns Super PAC is run by Eric Cantor's ex-aides, and takes its very name 'Young Guns' from the self-described 'young gun' House Majority Leader Cantor. The Super PAC has been actively trying to defeat one of the Republican primary candidates and they give this as a main reason. The Young Guns Super PAC believes as I do-- that Congressman Frank Guinta's call to abolish the Department of Education is too 'extreme.' Clearly, even Eric Cantor's crowd knows that those who want to abolish the Department of Education, including Congressman Frank Guinta, are too extreme and should be defeated."

Monday in the CA-25 candidates' forum, for which anti-education extremist Buck McKeon didn't even bother showing up, progressive Lee Rogers spent a lot of his time talking about the need for freeing up teachers to spend more quality time teaching children. This morning, still fired up from the debate he had this to say about McKeon and education policy:

Education is the foundation of our country's economy. It is the great equalizer that allows one to migrate up the social ladder. Extreme positions like ending the Department of Education are not tolerated by mainstream voters. It is such a short-sighted position. Rep. McKeon is on the Education and Labor Committee and has personally profited from actions on the committee. He traded stock in private colleges and voted to make them more profitable. This, while students are drowning in debt. We have more debt in student loans than on credit cards, over $1 trillion. I'm still paying off my student loans and I know what it's like to be bombarded by for-profit lenders preying on our students. No thank you, Buck!

Guinta, Mourdock and McKeon are all on the same page. Carol Shea-Porter and Lee Rogers are on a very different page and both are committed to strengthening, not weakening, public education. As Paul Krugman pointed out in his column Monday, the Republicans are not just waging a war on women, they're also waging a war on the young.

Let’s start with some advice Mitt Romney gave to college students during an appearance last week. After denouncing President Obama’s “divisiveness,” the candidate told his audience, “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”

The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch-- the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.

I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.

So how, exactly, are young people from cash-strapped families supposed to “get the education”? Back in March Mr. Romney had the answer: Find the college “that has a little lower price where you can get a good education.” Good luck with that. But I guess it’s divisive to point out that Mr. Romney’s prescriptions are useless for Americans who weren’t born with his advantages.

...What should we do to help America’s young? Basically, the opposite of what Mr. Romney and his friends want. We should be expanding student aid, not slashing it. And we should reverse the de facto austerity policies that are holding back the U.S. economy-- the unprecedented cutbacks at the state and local level, which have been hitting education especially hard.

Yes, such a policy reversal would cost money. But refusing to spend that money is foolish and shortsighted even in purely fiscal terms. Remember, the young aren’t just America’s future; they’re the future of the tax base, too.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste; wasting the minds of a whole generation is even more terrible. Let’s stop doing it.

JOHN CORNYN SOUNDS A SOUR NOTE FOR EDUCATION

frustrated trombone player

When Senator Tester addressed a roomful of progressives in a friend's home the other night he mostly talked about weighty matters before the Congress-- war and peace in the Middle East, the Farm Bill, Americans' right to privacy. But at one point the conversation strayed to music. He spoke with great enthusiasm about learning to play the trumpet as a kid and how he almost became a professional musician. Before I could ask him if he was more a Dizzy fan or a Miles fan or what he thinks about Arturo Sandoval and Maynard Ferguson, he began talking about the tragedy of how No Child Left Behind has ruined obliterated music programs in public schools and how that could backfire because of the debilitating impact on future physicists, mathameticians, and engineers. When a group of Montana school superintendents and principals met with Margaret Spelling, Bush's Secretary of Education and the Grand Dame of NCLB, and voiced widely held opinions that cutting back on programs like music was damaging students she asked if they wanted her to start testing for music too. It's not why they requested the meeting.

John Cornyn (R-TX) has a very different point of view regarding public education and regarding music than Senator Tester. According Dana Milbank's column in today's Washington Post Cornyn took Lyle Lovett's appearance at the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday as an opportunity to talk about his own musical background. He complained that his parents "forced upon me trombone lessons" and that he was bitter because "the opposite sex was not attracted to trombone." I won't comment on the attraction of any particular trombone players.

The star-struck lawmakers competed to display their musical savvy.

"Texas has produced a large number of our nation's most famous musicians," Cornyn announced, and then proceeded to misidentify the father of Texas swing, the late Bob Wills of the Texas Playboys, as "Bob Willis." Murmurs spread through the crowd. "Excuse me! I don't know why I said Bob Willis," the embarrassed lawmaker apologized, before recovering enough to ask Lovett whether the singer Robert Earl Keen "was your housemate at Texas A&M?"

"We lived down the street from one another," Lovett testified. Without objection, this salient fact was entered into the record.

..."There hasn't been [a hearing] I've enjoyed personally as much in a long time," Cornyn, who singled out singer Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, sitting in the first row and wearing a white cowboy hat."

At dinner the other night I asked Senator Tester if he thought that Republicans really want to destroy public education. He looked me straight in the eyes and said yes. We didn't discuss Cornyn per se but I might add that Cornyn has a perfect and unblemished voting record when it comes to funding public education-- a perfect zero. Since 2003 there are been 16 roll call votes involving public education and Cornyn has voted against education every single time. Although mainstream conservatives like Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Robert Bennett (R-UT), Kit Bond (R-MO), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Chuck Grassley (R-KS), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Richard Shelby (R-AL) have on occassion put aside their fanatic partisanship to join with Democrats for the sake of children, Cornyn never has-- not even one time. He really does want to do away with public education and return America to a feudal society which, at the bottom line, is what contemporary Republicanism is all about. Bush's veto of the education and healthcare bill yesterday should be seen in this context

I don't know off-hand if Rick Noriega plays a trombone or any other instruments, but I spoke with him in August and I can tell you he's a huge music fan and that he has an outstanding record in support of public education. There is a clear and stark difference between Rick Noriega and John Cornyn and they will face off in a race for the U.S. Senate next year. Teaxs voters will get a chance to decide if they would like to move forward or backward. If you've already made up your mind and you want to go forward, surf over to Rick's Blue America page and give him a hand.

In the Bush regime you don't have to draw a line between the promoters of wacko ideology and the enablers of mass thievery--it's one big crime family

Our motto: "No student left un-shaken-down"

I haven't had a chance yet to read the Murray Waas piece Howie cites below detailing the nuts 'n' bolts of how partisan scumbags in the White House perverted the operation of the Justice Department into an agency whose primary--if not only--function is to further their political agenda. I really am curious about the details of the process, but for the time being I've got the gist of it from Howie's post.

Meanwhile in this morning's Washington Post I was reading how the recently exposed cesspool of corruption that is the nation's student lending program--now an $85 billion a year business--uncovered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and others is neither an accident nor a surprise. It turns out that the potential problems were identified by the Clinton Education Department, which drafted proposals that were joyously trashed once the thieving scumbags and thieving-scumbag enablers of the new regime had the chance.

"The proposed policy," writes the Post's Amit R. Paley, "which Education Department officials drafted near the end of the Clinton presidency and circulated at the start of the Bush administration, represented an early, significant but ultimately abortive government response to a problem that this year has grown into a major controversy."

In a pattern we are now seeing documented (with "smoking guns" all over the damned place, if anybody cared) throughout the Bush regime:

The abandonment of the 2001 proposal underscores what some consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers believe is lax federal oversight of the financial aid system by a department they say is too cozy with the industry. More than a dozen senior department officials either previously worked in the student loan business or found high-paying jobs in the sector after they left the agency.

"The Department of Education has been run as a wholly owned subsidiary of the loan industry under this administration," said Barmak Nassirian, a longtime advocate for industry reform at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "They are running the federal loan program for the profit of their friends and not for the benefit of students and taxpayers."

Chad Colby, a department spokesman, said he was not aware of the 2001 proposal but noted that a task force was created last week to consider new rules.

So the wholesale thieving and gouging that has come to infest the student loan business was in fact expressly and knowingly blessed by the apparatchiks of the Bush regime. You'd think they would have their hands full trying to arrange the un-education of America's youth back to the 14th century, but it turns out that no, they have plenty of time to enable the friends and cronies of Bushworld to steal every dollar bill they can get their scummy paws on.

I'm not even sure that "a scandal a day" describes the scale of the corruption now spewing out of the Bush regime. Just from the dribs and drabs that have begun to be documented, it seems clear that the breadth and depth of the dismantling of our democracy and the 24/7 thievery exceed even the wildest imaginings of the most devout Bush-basher.

For "people like us," the Bush regimists have created a gold rush of opportunity, with the "government" acting as a cheerleading section. The victims, of course, are ordinary Americans, for whom the regime apparently has limitless hatred and contempt. To quiet the loathsome masses, known affectionately as "suckuhs," it enslaves them with junk religion and wacko way-far-right ideology.

Remember when George W. Bush made believe he wanted to be president so he could bring an end to the sleaze of the Clinton administration? Is somebody going to try to help Americans understand the scope of the fraud that has been perpetrated on them amid the regime's orgy of flag-waving? The media don't seem much interested, and neither do many Democrats, whose attitude toward government-sponsored profiteering is, "Whee, it's our turn now!"