Betsy DeVos Nomination a New High-Water Mark in Right Wings Long War on Public Education

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The right wing’s long-term campaign to undermine public education is a battle being waged on multiple fronts. Public education’s enemies include religious conservatives who want public tax dollars to support schools that teach religious dogma, ideological opponents of government and public sector unions, and sectors of corporate America who see profits to be skimmed or scammed from the flow of tax dollars devoted to education. Billionaire Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Secretary of Education, has been actively engaged on all these fronts. DeVos, who like Trump celebrates being “politically incorrect,” has harsh words for the education establishment, declaring in a 2015 speech at an education conference, “Government really sucks.”

DeVos has been, in the words of Mother Jones’s Kristina Rizga, “trying to gut public schools for years.”  Indeed, as the New York Times noted, it is “hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools.” In addition to these ideological concerns, DeVos is simply unqualified for the job: she has never been a teacher, school administrator, or even state-level education policy bureaucrat. She did not attend public schools and neither did her children.

With the DeVos nomination, Religious Right activists have drawn a step closer to achieving the anti-public-education dream that the late Jerry Falwell did not live to see fully implemented: “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools,” Falwell wrote in 1979. “The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”

At the same time, if DeVos is confirmed, anti-government and anti-union ideologues will have taken a major step toward the late Milton Friedman’s vision of completely privatizing public education. Friedman, intellectual godfather of the voucher movement, said “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system.”

http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/betsy-devos-nomination-new-high-water-mark-right-wing-s-long-war-public-ed

[guillaumeb]

1. "Privatize and monetize" are the GOP goals.

They have attempted to do this with the prison system, and will try to do so with every government function where they see an opportunity for a profit.

[Turbineguy]

2. And it's been a pretty successful war.

But it's not over until you can actually obtain a Master's of Ignorance.

[DK504]

5. The Reagan started his war

on education in California as Gov., ripping apart everything Gov. Pat Brown had done to make California schools the top in the country. As President he did all he could to continue his jihad on education. Looks like it's been paying off.

[Turbineguy]

8. My H.S. Econ Teacher (in CA)

who got through the depression and was in the Normandy invasion loathed Reagan.

[moda253]

3. This is the appointment that bothers me the most

I mean just about every single pick he has made is absolutely horrific but this is the one that has me unable to sleep very well. Never mind the effect it is going to have on my young kids, one of which will be starting Kindergarten in 2018, but they will keep people uneducated for generations to come. I don't mean that to sound as bad as it does but without public education there is no hope at all for closing achievement gaps. There was a great program done by This American Life called "The problem we all live with" that delved into the lack of integration into our school systems and how integration is the only thing that has had good positive measurable effects on the achievement gap. And here was are going to destroy public education, give people a coupon to send their kid to school. We are going to become an ever increasingly class based society where the brand of education you received is going to determine your entire life. Fuck.

[Freethinker65]

4. +1000

In complete agreement. This has been their end plan all along. They intend to dessimate not just public K through 12 schools, they have also been going after public university funding, curriculum, and individual professors. There are attempts to determine student loans depending on specificly deemed worthy/unworthy majors as well. Truly frightening.

[Phoenix61]

6. Agreed

I just don't understand why people have such a difficult time wrapping their heads around separation of church and state. If you want to send your child to a faith based school, go for it, but don't expect the government to fund your decision. Annoyed your tax dollars fund public education? Well, I'm annoyed my tax dollars subsidize Wal-Mart because they are too cheap to pay their employees a living wage. Get over it. That's part of living here.

[etherealtruth]

7. Why Michigan (Devos' home state) doesn't have a single voucher program?

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/charterschoice/2017/01/why_michigan_doesnt_have_school_vouchers_and_probably_never_will.html?print=1

The DeVoses have been influential advocates and philanthropic supporters of school choice policies in their home state and beyond—helping launch and shape Michigan's charter school sector over the last two decades. But the DeVoses are also big proponents of school vouchers, which allow students to use public money to attend a private school.

So if the DeVoses have been so successful in influencing charter school policy in the state, why doesn't Michigan have a single voucher program? The answer has to do with something in the state's constitution called a Blaine Amendment.

Named for James G. Blaine, a U.S. representative from Maine who served in the House in the late 1800s, Blaine Amendments appear in 37 state constitutions, and they ban states from sending public money to private or religious institutions. Michigan's Blaine Amendment is the most restrictive in the country.

"This is a very specific Blaine Amendment to stop funds going to private schools," said Robert Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice. "Most other Blaine Amendments don't typically ... mention mechanisms like vouchers." Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that school vouchers did not violate the U.S. Constitution's establishment clause (because states don't choose which private schools to send the money to, parents do), Blaine Amendments in state constitutions, like Michigan's, have acted as a bulwark slowing the spread of vouchers.

[Bozvotros]

9. Great article

And an extra special big fuck you to Joe Leiberman who gave a fawning ass sucking introduction to Ms. Devos who comes from a family of out and out psychopaths (brother Erik Prince of Blackwater) and Amway hucksters who would put your toddler in a blender if it would improve their bottom line. She should be no where near this level of power but she is and to let her in is to put her brother, a murderous mercenary, that much closer to Trump. You never know when you might need a completely conscienceless ghoul to run a private army to do your bidding, so by all means hire someone in their family.