Tag: Betsy DeVos

Education Dept. rejects vast majority of applicants for temporary student loan forgiveness program

Tens of thousands of public servants have applied to have their federal student loans forgiven through a temporary relief program run by the U.S. Education Department. Fewer than 300 have had success.

Now, one of the lawmakers who championed the initiative wants to know what happened.

“We authorized $700 million dollars to help ensure public servants — including firefighters, teachers, and nurses — receive the loan forgiveness they have earned, and it’s maddening that the Trump Administration is letting it go to waste,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in an email.

View the complete April 2 article by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel on The Washington Post website here.

Department Of Education Wasted $1 Billion On Failed Charter Schools

A new report issued by the Network for Public Education provides a detailed accounting of how charter schools have scammed the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP) for up to $1 billion in wasted grant money that went to charters that never opened or opened for only brief periods of time before being shut down for mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment, or fraud. The report also found many of the charters receiving grant awards that managed to stay open fall far short of the grant program’s avowed mission to create “high-quality” schools for disadvantaged students.

President Trump’s 2020 budget blueprint proposes increasing funding for the charter grant program by 13.6 percent, from $440 to $500 million, and education secretary Betsy DeVos praised this increase as a step forward for “education freedom.” But the report finds that increasing federal funds for this program would mostly continue to perpetuate academic fraud. Continue reading “Department Of Education Wasted $1 Billion On Failed Charter Schools”

Five Trump trips to Mar-a-Lago would cover Betsy Devos’s proposed Special Olympics cuts

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on March 26 questioned Education Secretary Betsy DeVos about her proposed education cuts. (House Appropriations Committee)

It’s not Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s fault that her department has to cut its budget. That’s a mandate coming down from her boss, President Trump.

But DeVos is the one to make specific recommendations about where those cuts should be made. On Tuesday, she appeared on Capitol Hill to defend them — including canceling out federal funding for the Special Olympics in next year’s budget.

“We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget,” DeVos told legislators, in defense of her proposals.

View the complete March 27 article by Philip Bump on The Washington Post website here.

Betsy DeVos promotes plan to hand over billions in federal tax credits to private, religious and home schooling

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been touring the country to promote her plan to hand over billion of dollars in federal tax credits to dramatically expand the number of students attending private schools, religious schools, or even being homeschool. The program, part of a bill in Congress, would be funded through private donations in exchange for tax credits. In other words, tax dollars would effectively be paying for the program, as those dollars will have to be made up by taxpayers.

Secretary DeVos’ “Education Freedom Scholarships” program would continue the Trump administration’s blurring of the lines between church and state. Just last week Sec. DeVos announced the Dept. of Education will no longer ban religious organizations from being funded with taxpayer dollars for secular projects.

The Dept. of Education claims up to $5 billion annually could be allocated, but Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who spoke at an event with DeVos to roll out his bill to support the program (video below), said it would be $10 billion.

View the complete March 18 article by David Badash with The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Demolishing Erik Prince: One TV interview shows exactly how to deal with Trump’s allies

Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera English took Trump pal Erik Prince apart in two minutes. American media: Watch and learn.

“He can’t keep getting away with it!” was one of the lines from “Breaking Bad” in which Aaron Paul’s award-winning acting talents were on full soul-crushing display. In the climactic scene from season five, episode 12, Paul’s Jesse Pinkman cries out in mid-nervous breakdown over the fact that Bryan Cranston’s Walter White indeed keeps getting away with one murderously bad decision after another.

Somehow, Donald Trump and his crew of mostly incompetent co-conspirators seemingly keep getting away with it — flooding the zone with one trespass after another, against the rule of law or against democratic norms or against common decency. To varying extents, we’re all Jesse Pinkman these days, raging for justice and fighting against the slowly metastasizing normalization of Trumpism.

With the exception of a few fearless White House reporters, the press has mostly been hectored into submission when directly challenging the Trump team. Credit where credit is due: Playboy’s Brian Karem and CNN’s Jim Acosta have each risked their posts by refusing to be silenced mid-question by Trump’s stumpy-fingered bullying. Likewise, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell have been particularly relentless in their coverage of the Trump crisis. The print press has provided volumes of reporting along these lines too, but too many White House journalists continue to lose their nerve when battered by Trump’s cowardly aggression against what he calls “the enemies of the people.” (Everything he says and does telegraphs his guilt.)

Blackwater founder Erik Price hid information about 2016 Trump Tower meeting while under oath: House Intel chair

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Erik Prince hid information about his attendance at a 2016 Trump Tower meeting to discuss Iran while under oath.

In an interview with on Al Jazeera’s “Head to Head,” Price stated that he was present at an Aug. 3, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower to “talk about Iran policy,” and that he disclosed information about that meeting even though it does not appear in a transcript of his testimony.

According to Schiff, Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, is dead wrong.

View the complete March 10 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Democrats accuse Education Department of interfering in probe of DeVos

House and Senate Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Tuesday alleging they have proof of the agency urging an independent watchdog to drop an active internal investigation into DeVos’ reinstatement of a controversial accrediting body, NBC News reports.

Details: Following a congressional request in December, the inspector general began investigating DeVos’ decision to reinstate ACICS, an accrediting agency the Obama administration discontinued. Democrats claim that Deputy Secretary Mitchell Zais wrote a letter to Acting Inspector General Sandra Bruce asking her to reconsider the investigation and instead look into the Obama administration’s decision to end ACICS. When Bruce refused, Zais attempted to remove her from office.

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  • The agency later had to reverse the decision to replace Bruce with a hand-picked inspector general once allegations of conflict of interest came to light.

View the complete February 19 article by Gigi Sukin on the Axios website here.

Betsy DeVos is making campuses safer for rapists and their enablers

“In the sports sector, what she’s proposing is the worst-case scenario.”

Credit: Diana Ofosu, ThinkProgress

In 2016, Michigan State University gymnast Lindsey Lemke told her coach, Kathie Klages, that she had been sexually abused by Larry Nassar, a doctor in the school’s athletic department. Klages didn’t report Lemke’s allegation to anyone.

In 2017, three Baylor football players allegedly raped two female Baylor students at an off-campus apartment. In this case, the players were separated from the team at the time of the allegations and eventually suspended.

In both of these headline-grabbing cases, the abused students were able to avail themselves of Title IX protections in reclaiming their safety. And according to new Title IX guidelines proposed by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, it’s possible that very soon, neither of these things will be considered Title IX violations by the federal government.

View the complete February 14 article by Lindsay Gibbs on the ThinkProgress website here.

The Risks in Betsy DeVos’ Rethink of Higher Education

Credit: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press

In its first two years, the Trump administration bent over backwards to gut Obama administration regulations designed to hold colleges or programs accountable for ripping off students. Now, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is kicking 2019 off with an attempt to dismantle bedrock protections created decades ago that define what it means to receive a college education and the role gatekeepers play in conducting quality oversight.

This week, the U.S. Department of Education detailed exactly how it plans to accomplish its goals. The elimination of these protections risks the proliferation of poor-quality schools in the name of innovation, leading to more dead ends and broken promises for students.

Efforts to implement these changes kick off next week and negotiations will take months. But the Center for American Progress got its first look at what exactly the Trump administration hopes to accomplish. Here are the five biggest risks in the Department’s agenda.

View the complete January 9 article by Antoinette Flores on the Center for American Progress website here.

Trump Officials Plan to Rescind Obama-Era School Discipline Policies

Credit: Saul Loeb, Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is planning to roll back Obama-era policies aimed at ensuring that minority children are not unfairly disciplined, arguing that the efforts have eased up on punishment and contributed to rising violence in the nation’s schools, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The decision culminates a nearly yearlong effort begun by the Trump administration after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The deaths of 17 students and staff members on Feb. 14 prompted lawmakers in both parties to demand tougher gun laws, but after a brief flirtation with gun control, President Trump abandoned that focus and instead empowered a school safety commission, led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Almost immediately, the commission turned away from guns and instead scrutinized the Obama administration’s school discipline policies, though none of the most high-profile school shootings were perpetrated by black students. The commission’s focus was part of a broader effort to reject the previous administration’s race-conscious education efforts, which have included siding with Asian students suing Harvard to end affirmative action and delaying an Obama-era rule to prevent disproportionate numbers of minority children from being funneled into special education classes.

View the December 17 article by Erica L. Green and Katie Benner on The New York Times website here.