Posted on 11/23/2016 10:20:12 AM PST by hotsteppa
BREAKING NEWS: President-elect Donald Trump has named Betsy DeVos, a conservative activist and billionaire philanthropist who has pushed forcefully for private school voucher programs nationwide, as his nominee for education secretary, according to a person close to DeVos.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
They’ll just call it something brand new and shove that down our throats.
You are correct. As usual, the usual parrots on this board posting a load of crap that they know nothing about. I swear sometimes conservatives are just as stupid and obnoxious as those on the left.
Oh goodie. The Hand Winger’s Association of FR is going to need more lotion to prevent those unsightly callouses.
Folks, this lady will work for Trump. She will either implement his policies or she will be fired.
She fought FOR common core, with a lot of her own money, while in Michigan.
Do you think she’s going to be reprogrammed in the plane somewhere over the Appalachian mountains on her way to DC?
If Trump really meant what he said about common core, WHY would he appoint someone who was a HUGE supporter of common core?
Looks like payola since she helped him carry Michigan.
What you should know about incoming education secretary Betsy DeVos — and what her choice might tell us about Trump’s education plans
DeVos, an advocate for school vouchers, has chaired the Michigan Republican party and played a key role in some major education policy decisions there in recent years. But unlike former D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee and charter-school leader Eva Moskowitz, two others Trump considered for the education secretary position, DeVos has kept a relatively low national profile. She has neither worked in public education nor chosen public schools for her own children, who attended private Christian schools.
Earlier this week, Chalkbeat compiled a few things we could reasonably surmise from a DeVos pick:
1. Trump intends to go through with his sweeping voucher plan.
On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to use federal funds to encourage states to make school choice available to all poor students, including through vouchers that allow families to take public funding to private schools.
That’s exactly what DeVos has zealously worked to make happen on a state-by-state basis for decades. In 2000, she helped get a ballot measure before Michigan voters that would have enshrined a right to vouchers in the state’s Constitution. After the measure failed, she and her husband formed a political action committee to support pro-voucher candidates nationally. Less than a decade later, the group counted a 121-60 win-loss record.
One recipient of its support: former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who created the voucher program that Trump’s vice president-elect, Mike Pence, later expanded. Indeed, DeVos’s vision puts her more in line with Pence, who has supported private school vouchers for both low- and middle-income families, than with Trump, whose plan extends only to poor families.
Trump also vowed to promote publicly funded but privately managed charter schools. But DeVos, whose husband founded an aviation-themed charter school in their hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has expressed reservations about them.
“Charter schools take a while to start up and get operating,” she told Philanthropy Roundtable in 2013. “Meanwhile, there are very good non-public schools, hanging on by a shoestring, that can begin taking students today.”
2. School oversight might not be the education department’s top concern.
DeVos and her husband played a role in getting Michigan’s charter school law passed in 1993, and ever since have worked to protect charters from additional regulation. When Michigan lawmakers this year were considering a measure that would have added oversight for charter schools in Detroit, members of the DeVos family poured $1.45 million into legislators’ campaign coffers — an average of $25,000 a day for seven weeks. Oversight was not included in the final legislation.
The DeVos influence is one reason that Michigan’s charter sector is among the least regulated in the country. Roughly 80 percent of charters in Michigan are run by private companies, far more than in any other state. And state authorities have done little up to now to ensure that charter schools are effectively serving students, eliciting concern from current federal authorities.
“There are a lot of schools that are doing poorly and charter authorizers do not seem to be taking the necessary actions to either improve performance or close those underperforming charters,” current U.S. Secretary of Education John King told Chalkbeat about Michigan last month.
3. The Common Core would remain a question mark.
DeVos hasn’t been outspoken about the Common Core, the shared learning standards adopted by most states in recent years. But some of her ties would suggest that she supports the effort to raise and standardize expectations of what students should learn in each grade. She’s on the board of Foundation for Excellence in Education, the group that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush founded to promote school choice and the Common Core.
On the campaign trail, Trump routinely denounced the standards — despite his having no authority to “repeal” them — in statements that won applause from conservatives and liberal parents and teachers alike. But his transition team said the meeting with DeVos “focused on the Common Core mission, and setting higher national standards and promoting the growth of school choice across the nation.”
The statement suggests a possible effort to achieve the standards’ goals without promoting the Common Core brand — exactly the middle path that many states have chosen as they revise the standards, often only lightly, and rename them.
4. The education secretary won’t be a counterweight to Republican officials.
Trump’s consideration of Moskowitz and Rhee, both self-identified Democrats, raised the hopes of some that the federal education department’s leader could counterbalance some more hard-right administration officials. (It also prompted one prominent education lobbying group to issue a statement calling on Democrats not to take a position in Trump’s administration.)
That hope would evaporate if DeVos is the choice, though there is some evidence that she is less extreme than some of the voices gaining prominence in Trump’s administration so far. For one, she did not support Trump even once he became the presumptive Republican nominee, throwing her vote as a party delegate instead behind Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Two years ago, she also publicly called for a Republican leader in Michigan to step down after he made anti-gay and anti-Muslim comments on social media.
But she is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican party leader who has been more conservative on education issues than some of her colleagues. In fact, DeVos stepped down as chair of Michigan’s Republican party in 2000 after the Republican governor declined to support vouchers. (She later took the position back.)
Outside of education, her family gave heavily to efforts to ban same sex-marriage in Michigan.
5. DeVos will have to operate outside of most of the world she has known.
Many of DeVos’ successes have resulted from using her family’s considerable financial resources. DeVos family foundations reported lifetime charitable giving of more than $1.2 billion earlier this year to institutions ranging from hospitals to arts organizations. Political donations — to oppose gay marriage, support vouchers, and sway lawmakers from increasing oversight to charter schools — came on top of that. As education secretary, she would not be able to rely on her personal wealth and approach to get things done.
“I am all for getting rid of common core, but I really hope they do not start allowing “school choice.””
School choice was mentioned countless times by Trump during the campaign. He’s for it, especially for the inner cities where the schools are garbage.
To all the professional moaners, bitchers and complainers about everything on here, Betsy DeVos is not a supporter of Common Core. If people did a cursory investigation of the facts instead of spouting crap, you could learn something. Read her own words. You may also try Twitter and see what she just tweeted.
Grand Rapids hat tip
Great pick
Good as it gets for that post
With friends like you on the right, who needs enemies? Amirite? But please, carry on with your opposition of a political appointee by Trump—which is shared by DUmmies..
She’s on the board of Jebbie’s common core ‘effort’. Do you think he would have picked someone who did NOT believe wholeheartedly in common core and fedgov setting standards?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3497668/posts?page=85#85
“...But some of her ties would suggest that she supports the effort to raise and standardize expectations of what students should learn in each grade. She’s on the board of Foundation for Excellence in Education, the group that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush founded to promote school choice and the Common Core.”
“... But his transition team said the meeting with DeVos “focused on the Common Core mission, and setting higher national standards and promoting the growth of school choice across the nation.” “
DeVos is an excellent decision.
Romney should not be Secty of State.
Giuliani should be Homeland Security, in my mind. It takes a legal background and a great understanding of what’s at stake.
Giuliani has both of those in spades.
I’ll just mark you down as a common core supporter then.
Exactly! The inner city schools are garbage because of the kids who attend there. Don’t bring them into good schools!
“Common core is also a state level initiative, there are limits to what a Trump administration can do to end it without creating a whole new federal bureaucracy.”
Bullshite. Dept of Education can stop it by threatening to withhold federal $$$ to localities that use Common Core.
And you are marked down as a DUmmie supporter. How’s that sound?
BTW, my kids are in private schools so I do not have to put up with this crap. Smart power.
No and she clarified it on Twitter. That was a big question and Thank God she doesn’t.
If this lady gets her way your kids WILL have to do common core.
See how that works?
Then your kids will be DUmmies too!
Bump. Starve the beast.
“The inner city schools are garbage because of the kids who attend there. Don’t bring them into good schools!”
Good grief. That’s as disordered a statement as I have seen in a while. The inner city schools are crap because there is no discipline, lousy teachers & a corrupt teachers union plus 1 parent or no parent families. Those turdholes produce progressive tools & criminal minions. We cannot allow it to continue.
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