Betsy DeVos’ educational marketplace concept is absurd by Dr. Linda M. McNeil

Texans, be fully aware of what a Betsy DeVos future means for Texas schools, the well-being of our children and communities, and democracy itself.  Here are a couple of to-the-point comments by Rice University Professor, Dr. Linda M. McNeil:

DeVos represents more than a one-woman threat to our public education system. She embodies two forces converging on our public schools: the billionaire outsider (think Perot, Gates, Waltons, Broad, Fishers) who uses the power of concentrated wealth to shape policies that dismantle or degrade public institutions to remove them from democratic governance, and the privatizers, who want to use our tax dollars as venture capital for their own purposes.

If we want academically challenging, culturally rich, equitable schools abundantly equipped to prepare our children for active learning, productive careers and a shared sense of purpose for the collective good, we need to speak out: to be more informed than Betsy DeVos; to make our legislators hear that however extreme possibility of losing the public's schools. We want that possibility to be stopped right here in Texas. An uncertain market of self-serving players will not give our children the education they need to thrive.

Read on.

 Angela 

Betsy DeVos’ educational marketplace concept is absurd 

by Linda McSpadden McNeil / Dallas Morning News

February 17, 2017

Betsy DeVos testified during her Senate confirmation hearing in January. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The U.S. secretary of education has vowed in speeches, in writings and in millions of dollars of campaign contributions to destroy America's public schools. The public's schools.

This is not an accusation; it is her source of pride. Betsy DeVos wants to create a "market" of "choice" in which schools are no longer public goods, democratically governed of, by, and for the people and their children, but instead, private organizations funded by our tax dollars but not governed by us, the public. Her stated "long game" is to use tax dollars to fund religious schools, specifically Christian schools. As a steppingstone to that goal, she advocates that tax dollars in the form of "vouchers" be shifted from the public's schools to private schools and charter companies. She calls this "choice," putting children and their education out for bid.

The confirmation of Betsy DeVos to be the nation's education secretary has been fiercely opposed by teachers and parents and by elected officials committed to strong public schools.

Her years of pushing privatization in Ohio and in her home state of Michigan are fraught with harsh language about the public's schools ("dead ends"), and at the same time a record of low achievement, questionable finances and instability in the charter schools she claims to be their superior.

Many people have commented on DeVos' ignorance of federal policies that her agency is charged to enforce, notably, the IDEA law guaranteeing appropriate educational services to children with disabilities, a law re-authorized under President George W. Bush and bipartisan votes in Congress. DeVos had no answers for questions about how to best assess children's learning, and her position on guns in schools brought tears to the eyes of anyone who understood the source of the question: a Connecticut senator, the Sandy Hook parents' senator.

What struck me was less her lack of preparedness, but that broad, fixed smile as she stumbled through or avoided responding. I came to think of it as a power smile: a smile that said "I don't need to know these things because I made large contributions to many of you on this committee, and besides, I have a completely different agenda for this department and America's schools. I will create a marketplace of private religious schools and corporate charter chains, even if it takes all the federal Title I (poverty impact) dollars, the funds for special education and civil rights enforcement, educational research, or other federal programs."

Such an educational "marketplace" is absurd from the start. It is fundamentally undemocratic, turning our children into commodities and their parents into customers, not citizens. We know from our local shops and industries that companies enter and leave markets when it suits their bottom line. Their obligation is to their investors, not to their customers. Evidence from 25 years of charters shows "school" companies are no different. A charter chain may locate a school in a neighborhood, recruit and enroll the children it "chooses," then if the economics don't pan out or the school doesn't produce the advertised educational outcomes, that school may close, sometimes even midyear.

Where do the children go? To the public school, of course, the school the community has established to educate all our children — a school now under-resourced because of the dollars that went to the charter or the voucher school, tax money that can't be recovered.

DeVos represents more than a one-woman threat to our public education system. She embodies two forces converging on our public schools: the billionaire outsider (think Perot, Gates, Waltons, Broad, Fishers) who uses the power of concentrated wealth to shape policies that dismantle or degrade public institutions to remove them from democratic governance, and the privatizers, who want to use our tax dollars as venture capital for their own purposes.

If either succeeds, America will no longer have a free public education system for all its children. It will no longer have an educated citizenry, prepared as Jefferson admonished to be able to prevent, discern, and even throw off tyranny. Could education as a common good be dismantled? Could the public's schools be replaced by a marketplace of schools that have little connection to the children and their families, their cultures and communities that have no obligation to serve a public purpose?

The threat (for DeVos, the vision) seems too extreme to worry about. When DeVos was confirmed, a reporter called to ask me what DeVos might do as secretary of education. I replied that if she does what she says she plans to do, she will destroy our public education system. The reporter heard hyperbole: "We're always going to have public schools. What can she really do?" I reminded her that dismantling public schools had been underway in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina gave privatizers the excuse to close damaged schools and shift tax dollars to charter schools. I pointed out DeVos' dismal record of backing charters in Detroit to the detriment of children in many of those charters as well as in the public schools now struggling with less funding.

 

 Chicago has closed dozens of public schools in poor and minority neighborhoods, outsourcing those children to charter chains.

And Dallas voters had to take a stand against an outsider billionaire who tried to replace the elected school board with a "home rule" setup favoring a "market" of charters.

Texas is the next laboratory for protecting the public's schools. The state constitution requires tax dollars be used for public schools. Bills before the Legislature would subvert the constitution by shifting tax dollars to private schools and charter chains, or giving tax credits to "donors" to vouchers (a double subtraction from our public schools).

If we want academically challenging, culturally rich, equitable schools abundantly equipped to prepare our children for active learning, productive careers and a shared sense of purpose for the collective good, we need to speak out: to be more informed than Betsy DeVos; to make our legislators hear that however extreme possibility of losing the public's schools. We want that possibility to be stopped right here in Texas. An uncertain market of self-serving players will not give our children the education they need to thrive.

Our legislators need to know we want them to reverse funding cuts, stop the talk of vouchers and step up to make the serious, long-term investment in the public's schools. That will be good for Texas kids and will mitigate any damage that might be coming out of Washington under DeVos.