Don't Read Me Today

Seriously. I'm not blogging today. I'm throwing all those words into tweeting, emailing and Facebook messaging my Senators and Representatives and telling them that so much of what's happening this week is not okay (I would be phoning them, but nobody's answering the phones and all the voicemails are full). Not the refusal to oppose Betsy DeVos. Not the muslim ban, exerted against legal residents of the US but not against countries with whom Trump does business. Not that stupid wall. Tomorrow I'll get back to it, but today, I'm contacting my representative.

You do the same. Seriously-- you're already on the internet-- spend the five minutes you were going to use to check me out and go bother your elected representative.

Friend$ of DeVos

If you follow the many pieces about Presumptive Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, you will notice that there are folks who stand up for her as a super-duper prospect for Secretary of Education.

For instance, Grand Rapids Public Schools Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal spoke up for her hometown girl Betsy, and was, according to released emails, prepared to accept an all-expenses-paid trip to DC to give a public school stamp of approval to the private charter school face of Betsy DeVos. The DeVos organization American Federation for Children was all set to foot the bill-- and at no extra charge, they were throwing in some dandy talking points that Neal could use while in DC. All heart, those AFC folks.

In fact, the talking points were so thorough that if Neal was questioned by reporters about how a public school superintendent from Michigan just happened to be sitting behind DeVos providing helpful optics, she needn't worry about how to respond to that-- just say

I’m proud and honored to be a guest of Secretary of Education-designate DeVos and confident she’ll be an effective, compassionate and innovative Secretary of Education.

The rescheduling of the hearing threw off the travel plans, which included a steak dinner and a night at the Marriot, costs for which fall roughly into the "loose money we dig out of the sofa cushions" category for the DeVos clan.

DeVos friendships often are tied up in money; witness the Senate Democrat's inquiry into the several school business operators who have sent dark money floating her way. Nothing nefarious there-- just being friendly with a woman who may soon decide the fate of education entrepreneurs.

But nobody is a better friend of Betsy DeVos than the organization Friends of Betsy DeVos. Here they are defending her a few days ago in the Washington Post, where they speak out against returning to "pre-Watergate" ethics standards where partisanship determines who gets chased.

Well, actually, Ed Patru spokesman for Friends of Betsy DeVos said it.

Patru is a busy friend, and yet, it seems that he is perhaps the only friend. I've looked for the organization on line and cannot find hide nor hair of it. Mercedes Schneider, who has an advanced degree in Look-It-Up-And-Hunt-It-Down-Ology, can't find anything, either. Just a string of articles with Patru leaping to DeVos's defense.

The most likely explanation is that Patru is paid to be Betsy's friend, and that he is a group all by himself.

Patru is currently a vice-president at DCI, a PR firm whose self-description is "an independent public affairs consulting firm that specializes in public relations, crisis management, grassroots engagement, and digital advocacy." A Michigan native, Patru has logged a lot of time with GOP contests, serving at one point with the House Republican Committee. Back in 2008 the Daily KOS was wondering if he was the new Karl Rove. Patru mentions that he worked on John McCain's 2000 Presidential campaign as Michigan media specialist; he also helmed the Senate campaign of Linda McMahon (wife of wrestling mogul Vince McMahon).

He's had some cute spats with other operatives like Jen Crider as part of his time with Freedom's Watch, the attempt to launch a conservative MoveOn that ultimately failed due, reportedly, to lots of infighting. After FW folded, Patru launched his own firm Amplifico which was supposed to provide "corporations and business coalitions with a fully staffed presidential-campaign-style war room on a contractual basis." Patru said that 

Amplifico is prepared to participate in today's high speed news cycle, providing campaigns with "a turn-key, fully functional 24-hour war room [paired] with aggressive online or offline public relations."

Which seems kind of like what he's doing for DeVos right now.

Annnd once upon a time he was the spokesman of the American Automobile Dealers Association.

Friends of Betsy DeVos doesn't have a twitter account, but Ed Patru does, and I've asked him to let me know who else is in the club with him. I'll let you know if he replies.

In the meantime, Betsy DeVos displays another characteristic common to many reformsters-- most of her "friends" are people to whom she has some sort of financial ties. They pay her, she pays them, everyone pays each other. It remains to be seen just how much she intends to turn USED into a pay-to-play business, but at least as long as the department and its secretary have a bunch of money, they will never run out of friends.

More Discouraging USED Appointments

The Trump Department of Education continues to shape up as a place that is, perhaps, more about patronage than education.

Today we have word from the Huffington Post that a memo from Jason Botel (another supremely reformy appointment as Senior White House Adviser for Education) that the following folks have been brought into the department:

Derrick Bolen
Debbie Cox-Roush
Kevin Eck
Holly Ham
Ron Holden
Amy Jones
Andrew Kossack
Cody J. Reynolds
Patrick Shaheen
Teresa UnRue
Josh Venable
Eric Ventimiglia
Beatriz Ramos
Jerry Ward
Patrick Young

The name that has attracted the most attention is Teresa UnRue, a 2010 grad of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh whose background is graphic design and printing and who served as an advance organizer for the Trump campaign in South Carolina. She's also apparently given to plenty of racist tweeting. She's passed along hi-larious Mexican jokes and a knee-slapping joke about how blacks should stop whining because they aren't slaves any more. Ladies and gentlemen, your new Department of Education.

[Update: Politico reports that UnRue's name has disappeared from the list of new hires. Whatever she was going to do for USED, apparently someone else is taking on that work.]

What about the rest of the list? Well, Dr. Google's work must always be taken with a grain of salt, but here's what I can find this morning.

There's a Derrick Bolen who is a regional field director for the Republican National Committee who graduated from Liberty University in 2016 with a BS in Political Science and Government.

 Debbie Cox Roush has already updated her LinkedIN account to show her as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the US Department of Education. Her previous experience is running DCR Creative Solutions of Florida, "an advocacy consulting and events Management Company." She was the Florida State Grassroots Director for the Trump campaign (she previously worked for Rubio). She's been politically active, has not always played well with fellow GOPs, but has little education background at all (Georgetown College, BA in History/Education, 1976).


There's a Kevin Eck who is a professional wrestler who says that Donald Trump is not fit to be in the WWE Hall of Fame. I'm guessing that's not our guy. There are a lot of Kevin Ecks out there.

Holly Ham has also updated her LinkedIn profile. The former Hewlett Packard sales exec and management consultant was a program adviser for the Trump campaign's data operations. Education background? Not so much.

Ron Holden is probably not the Seattle-based R&B singer, but you should totally check him out. 

Amy Jones? Another name that's hard to filter down.

 Andrew Kossack is straight from the Richard Fairbanks Foundation in Indiana, a money-shuttling service for Indianapolis grant-seekers. Before that, Indiana Department of Revenue commissioner and chief of staff, before that a Deputy Policy Director for the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and before that on the staff of Governor Mike Pence. He did spend about seventeen months in positions with "education" in the title. But his political and reformy connections are clearly strong.

Cody Reynolds. Not sure.

Patrick Shaheen has a Trump-loving twitter account and appears to have ties to New Hampshire, which makes me think he's this guy-- a field director for both the NH Republican State Committee and the Americans for Prosperity. Shaheen has attended many schools on his path toward lawyering, but none have intersected with education.

Josh Venable  helped prepare Betsy DeVos for her hearing after previously trying to help Jeb Bush get elected. He's also a former board member of FEE.

Eric Ventimiglia worked as a legislative aid and constituents relations manager for the Michigan House of Representatives. He graduated from Oakland University with a BA in Poli Sci in 2007.

Beatriz Ramos-- well, there was a travel aide for the Lt. Governor of Florida by that name involved in a briefly salacious scandal. Jerry Ward has a notably common name. Ditto Patrick Young.

I should note that none of the names I couldn't narrow down included people who were noted or accomplished educators.

Mostly what we have here are political operatives being rewarded. Apparently that's the USED mission-- reward folks for their assistance to political leaders.Let's hope that eventually one or two people who actually know about public education sneak in there somewhere.


 

IN: Teacher Sit-in For DeVos Senator

Todd Young was born in 1972 in Lancaster, PA. Today (Thursday) he's an Indiana senator with an office full of grumpy teachers.

Young's family moved him to Indiana, where he graduated from public high school and then went straight into the Navy, from there to the Naval Academy, graduated Cum Laude, got a commission in the Marines. Soccer star, intelligence officer, head recruiter in Chicago/Indiana area. Honorably discharged in 2000. Studied in London. Earned a law degree.

In the meantime, he also worked for the Heritage Foundation, worked for Senator Richard Lugar, and volunteered for Mitch Daniels gubernatorial campaign. He got the bug.

In 2010 he ran as a Republican for Indiana's 9th District with endorsements from luminaries all the way up to Dan Quayle. He defeated an incumbent. He had what was called a mixed record. In 2016, he decided to step up to a Senate seat. He won the GOP primary and trounced Evan Bayh in the general election to take Quayle's former seat (he's also married to Quayle's niece).

This "Marine unafraid to stand for conservative principles" had some help getting elected. The fight with Bayh drew a grand total of $38 million total in "outside money", with $24.3 million of that going to Young.

Young now sits on the Senate HELP committee, the one deciding the fate of Education Secretary-in-waiting Betsy DeVos. Want to guess who helped swell the Young coffers just last year?

Which brings us to today. Teachers have noticed that DeVos gave at least $48,000 to Young last year. Granted, that was a small drop in a $24 million bucket. Of course, it's also a year's salary for lots of teachers. Those teachers have demanded that Young recuse himself, and today they were driving the point home by staging a sit-in in his office.

Young's staff has pointed out that this sort of greasy-palmed cross-pollination of political backer and cabinet hopeful has occurred before, citing Senator Joe Donnelly's receipt of a contribution from Commerce Secretary hopeful Penny Pritzer. On the other hand, Pritzer's contribution was $5,000 in 2013 dollars, and she was a relatively non-controversial candidate who was approved 97-1.

Young's not going to recuse himself, and he's not going to vote against DeVos, either. But the sit-in today is a reminder to Indiana and the nation about how business is conducted these days. My hat is off to those Indiana teachers who made the gesture to help bring attention to just how this process is working.

Edushyster In DeVosland

Jennifer Berkshire often takes the unusual blogging step of doing actual journalism, like the kind where you call people and go places and actually talk to the carbon-based life forms who are involved in What's Going On. That's just part of what makes Edushyster required reading for anybody in the ed debates.

She recently traveled to DeVosland, the Michigan home base and spawning ground for Betsy DeVos, presumptive Secretary of Education, and her clan. Nine days, forty-some interviews, and a couple of exceptional posts were the product, but I wanted to hear more (and to add my vote for her to write a full-on book), so I took a page from her book and talked to her via phone. There are so many more stories to tell.

Berkshire has a keen sense of a particularly worded phrase, and she was struck by Jeb Bush's pledge pledge that DeVos would be a "champion of parents, not institutions" which strikes her a reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society." What Thatcher meant was that there are only individuals, families and other groups of humans, but larger social structures aren't real-- particularly the ones that are charged with providing support and service for society's members. When DeVos says that she doesn't stand with institutions, that includes institutions that look out for vulnerable citizens who may not have the power to look out for themselves. You know. Like schools.

Traveling to Michigan is really a must when studying DeVos, because within the state, they've never been particularly sneaky or subtle about what they want; it's almost as if it never occurred to them that someday Betsy might need to talk about civil rights with a straight face. Berkshire says, "For example, the family paw prints are all over various legislative maneuvers intended to disenfranchise African Americans, the beefed up emergency manager law that created the Flint water disaster being just one of these." Berkshire says that several (off-the-record) legislators said that Betsy herself helped push through a measure to end straight ticket voting at election time in order to discourage black voters in Flint and Detroit by making lines longer and slower. A judge struck it down for that very reason.

Berkshire also notes that Michigan is essentially a one-party state. The DeVos clan doesn't really deal with Democrats at all, but focuses a lot of attention on keeping their own party in line. There's a long list of people who "have been taken to the woodshed," and the clan often brings a great deal of firepower to even small betrayals (which suggests one reason that DeVos might be a good fit for a Trump administration). DeVos demands that legislators show more loyalty to the family than to the voters.

Some folks in Michigan say that DeVos can be flexible when it suits her. Race to the Top was initially viewed with suspicion until, some claim, Betsy figured out that it could be used to break Detroit City Schools. While the knock on DeVos is that she is anti-accountability, some Michigan folks say she can embrace accountability quite well when it lets her blow shit up.

Consider specifically the story of the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), a fun Michigan version of the state takeover district dodge. Berkshire tells the tale:

The EAA was initially created in an effort to win Race to the Top money, and DeVos and her allies were meh about it because it was really a Broad thing. But within three months, they’re pushing hard to expand the EAA statewide, even though there wasn’t yet any data. If you go back and look at the debate over expanding the EAA, you can almost feel the DeVos’ realization that they’ve been handed a gift with this thing that will enable them to go after their favorite targets--teachers unions, school boards, public school buildings. And by 2014, even when it was a measurable, disastrous failure, they were threatening to primary anyone who voted against expanding the EAA.

There are other side stories in the Mitten State. There's the story of how Detroit was on its way to being a portfolio district, with a whole alphabet soup of reformy groups carving up the spoils before Betsy blew the whole thing up and sent many reformy groups packing. There's a good reason that "progressive" reformsters are not lining up to back her.

Scan the Mitten state landscape and you’ll notice something interesting: there are virtually no #edreform groups. Where are they all? Michigan DFER is dead. Excellent Schools Detroit has withered away. Even Ed Trust, one of the last group’s standing, has come out against DeVos. In my interview with Gary Naeyaert, Betsy’s right-hand man at GLEP, he even accused the Waltons of “cutting and running”!

There's also the fascinating story of how the clan busted the union, but other groups have risen up to become equally annoying. Surprisingly, many Charter Management Organizations, which have historically depending on TFA as their classroom fillers no longer want to work with Teach for America because TFAers have gotten themselves a reputation for being troublemakers (aka keep trying to start unions, the little ingrates).

There's the infamous University of Michigan study of charter success in Michigan that is now three years overdue. Instead, the DeVos charter crowd keeps plugging the same old CREDO study. Where are the newer numbers? Nobody seems to know-- it's almost as if someone doesn't want that information to get out.

Berkshire also has some good stories about charter pluggers in Michigan, who have to go through some real contortions because Michigan is such a charter disaster. There is the story (recounted in her blog here) of the charter fans who, when asked to name a shining star, a prime example of great Michigan charters in action, actually named the charter run by an optometrist who was sent to jail for running his fraudulent charter school. That's their shining star.

If DeVos is confirmed (and while I will keep calling, and you should too, a confirmation is hugely likely), there will be some small upsides. Berkshire notes that defenders of public ed will no longer have to struggle to show the connection between charters, choice, and the privatization of pieces of a dismantled public ed system. Kind of like all those House episodes where he deliberately makes the disease worse so that it's easier to see and diagnose. Sending DeVos to DC may also earn Michigan a breather.

And if DeVos is confirmed, all of Berkshire's material will become hugely relevant and she can write the full account of DeVos's Michigan.

Local Control

States are increasingly telling cities what laws they may or may not pass. The most famous example may be North Carolina's HB-2, the notorious law that restricted bathroom access- but also, like laws passed in Alabama and other states, forbid cities to pass laws raising the minimum wage.

State legislatures are taking action to undo the choices of voters. North Carolina's legislature decided they were unhappy about the election for governor, so they stripped power from the office. And just this week, South Dakota's legislature is moving to throw out the law passed by the voters which would establish a host of ethics rules and oversight.

Throughout the nation, government is in the hands of the very rich, who since the advent of Citizens United have unbridled freedom to shop for the legislators who will provide the desired results. When the DeVos family couldn't convince the electorate to pass a voucher law or elect Dick DeVos governor, the billionaire family decided that it was time to just do an end run around the voters. If democratic local voter control won't provide the results you want, just circumvent it.

And what a week it has been. Herr Trump has declared that maybe he should send the feds into Chicago to clean things up. Government agencies, paid for with taxpayer dollars, have been forbidden to speak to those taxpayers. And we're getting a wall, courtesy of an executive order (that curious method by which Presidents get to pretend that they're actually the legislative branch and make laws).

And while Trump's declaration to launch an inquiry into election fraud may be related to a frail and tender ego, it may also make a handy first step toward extending the tools of voter suppression that have been steadily encroaching on voters over the past few years.

Charter schools and choice-- the good, the bad, and the ugly-- are perhaps best understood in the context of the larger erosion of democracy in our country.

There's no reason that charter schools have to be part of this problem. Charter schools can be run by and responsive to local taxpayers and voters. Just up the road from me is a community that lost their local school because the district felt enrollment had dropped too far; the community restarted their school as a charter school, owned, operated and controlled by a local board.

Charter schools do not have to mean the end of local control.

And yet, in the modern charter era, they almost always do. From Philly to Detroit to New Orleans, a signature feature of charter-choice systems is to do away with the local control of an elected board. Replace it with properly connected board members, or run it out of a corporate office-- sometimes far, far away. Hold meetings in the dark. Make decisions in seclusion. Keep the financial operations under wraps.

Charteristas have not been shy about it. Reed Hastings, head of Netflix and well-muscled charter supporter, famously outlined how bad elected school boards are for the business plan, and how they should be done away with. To the investors and businessmen, it is only common sense-- you do not let the help dictate how your business will be run and you do not let the customers see anything you don't want them to see. And those "customers" will damn well settle for the choices that you decide to give them, that you think they deserve, that make business sense for you.

There was a time when faux Democrats provided protective cover for this, and neo-liberals were fre market wolves in progressive sheeps' clothing. But that camouflage coalition is starting to show signs of strain, and it becomes increasingly obvious that this is a variant strain of Republicanism. I find that hard to face-- I come from a long line of Republicans, and there are strains of the classic version that I still resonate to. The less government, the better. Let people get together with their own neighbors to deal with their own stuff.

But this is one of the mysteries that we live with. How did the party of small government, local control, and no federal overreach-- how did they become the party of disenfranchisement, the party of government intrusion that works to disempower city governments and disenfranchise citizens. How did the party of Lincoln become the party that aims those attempts to disempower and disenfranchise mostly at citizens who are not wealthy and not white. How did the Grand Old Party end up providing a haven for a bunch of money-hungry power-grabbing racist sumbitches?

At any rate, school choice week is a frighteningly perfect time to reflect on how the worst of the modern charter movement is just a small part of a bigger movement, a sea change in which huge chunks of our elected government no longer holds the democratic process as a valuable or important part of our national life. If you want to pitch charter schools to me, your warm-up needs to be an explanation of how that charter will be a reflection of and responsive to local control, and if you can't do that, give me a good explanation of why democracy and local control are no longer an important part of our national character.

Reformster Jason Botel Added To USED

.@JasonBotel coming on as senior White House adviser for edu. Will work with acting secretary to lead new ED team: https://t.co/DPr9i1QLf8

— Caitlin Emma (@caitlinzemma) January 25, 2017

Jason Botel comes with the full reformy pedigree. He graduated from U of Penn in 1997 with a degree in English and went straight to work as a Teach for America recruit in Baltimore. He spent three whole years in the classroom, then went on to launch a Baltimore franchise of the KIPP school brand. He served as principal (on LinkedIN he calls it a "public school principal" job) while also serving as the KIPP Baltimore executive director.

In that capacity he went head-to-head with the teachers union, arguing that they shouldn't actually be paid for extra days and hours spent teaching. Presumably if you went to work for KIPP you just accepted that you would do more work for less pay than your professional peers in public schools.

From KIPP Botel moved on to become executive director of MarylandCAN, one of the network of fifty(ish) CANs that serve as lobbyists and financiers for the reformster movement, bolstered by all the big names like Gates and Walton. His job there was to be a soldier in the ongoing fight of charteristas trying desperately to get Maryland to unloose its restrictions and rules for charters (because, as we've all heard, the deal with charters is that they are all about accountability).

Botel has kept a relatively low profile on the large stage (at least according to Dr. Google). I'm sure more info is coming and we will learn more about him the days ahead (or the comments below), but as Betsy DeVos stumbles toward the Department of Education Secretary's office, the rest of the department is slowly filling up with tried-and-true reformster types like Hannah Skandera, whose checkered past includes Jeb Bush's Chiefs for Change, and Botel himself.

In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that Trumps USED will be jam packed with conventional reformsters (led by the most extreme version of their crowd). It's also clear that we really need to retire the "reform" moniker, because the fans of corporate privatization and dismantling public education are now the status quo, the establishment, the swamp. This is a USED that either Jeb or Hillary would have been comfortable with. Stay tuned for more additions to the department roster.