The Detroit Free Press has just written a piece on the DeVos family's funding of failed school choice experiments in the Detroit area. You can find the whole article here .
Some revealing quotes from the article indicate....
.... that the charter school lobby is driven, not by research or data, but by an ideology that says every government function would be improved by applying "free-market" principles: "This deeply dysfunctional educational landscape [in Detroit] — where failure is rewarded with opportunities for expansion and "choice" means the opposite for tens of thousands of children — is no accident. It was created by an ideological lobby that has zealously championed free-market education reform for decades, with little regard for the outcome."
.... that while traditional public schools are held to ever higher standards, charter schools are given a pass on performance: "On the west side, another charter school, Hope Academy, has been serving the community around Grand River and Livernois for 20 years. Its test scores have been among the lowest in the state throughout those two decades; in 2013 the school ranked in the first percentile, the absolute bottom for academic performance. Two years later, its charter was renewed."
.... that ultra-rich pro-privatization advocates like the DeVos family use their wealth to buy legislative actions that undermine traditional public schools and grease the wheels for proliferation of unaccountable charters: "The DeVoses have helped private interests commandeer public money that was intended to fulfill the state's mandate to provide compulsory education. The family started the Great Lakes Education Project, whose political action committee does the most prolific and aggressive lobbying for charter schools. Betsy DeVos and other family members have given more than $2 million to the PAC since 2001. GLEP has spent that money essentially buying policy outcomes that have helped Michigan's charter industry grow while shielding it from accountability.This summer, the DeVos family contributed $1.45 million over two months — an astounding average of $25,000 a day — to Michigan GOP lawmakers and the state party after the Republican-led Legislature derailed a bipartisan provision that would have provided more charter school oversight in Detroit."
....that the choice of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education is not only inappropriate because of her ties to the privatization lobby, but illogical, given the fact that she has never been an educator nor acquired any credentials that would qualify her to hold the position: "DeVos isn’t an educator, or an education leader. She’s not an expert in pedagogy or curriculum or school governance. In fact, she has no relevant credentials or experience for a job setting standards and guiding dollars for the nation’s public schools."
Everyone who reads this should contact their Senators and ask them to vote against DeVos' confirmation as Education Secretary. And Republicans who are endorsing her, shame on you for the double standard of claiming to be for "good government" while blindly accepting the nomination of an unqualified lobbyist for privatization for the position of overseeing the federal government's involvement in the nation's public schools.
