Portside

After six months, Betsy DeVos has taken some major steps to change education policy, and her very presence at the head of the U.S. Education Department signals something important about the past, present and future of public education in the United States. She faces protests at many public appearances, which is why she receives special protection from the U.S. Marshals Service, at an average cost so far this year of $1 million a month.

A moratorium on charter schools draws a bright line between a political regime intent on serving the privileged and a Democratic party that seeks to uphold labor and civil rights.

The experience of other countries suggests Betsy DeVos' voucher vision falls flat. Research led by an Indiana University professor confirms what school voucher critics have long argued: Voucher programs receive public funding yet discriminate on the basis of religion, disability status, sexual orientation and possibly other factors. Democratic political participation requires access to information, engagement in discourse and electoral activity to be effective.

Trump's choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is perhaps the most extreme of Trump's cabinet nominees. She has spent her entire adult life - and her family's considerable wealth - mounting campaigns to transfer public dollars away from public schools and into private and religious schools.

While it is doubtful that US President-elect Donald Trump ever read George Orwell's 1984, Trump's cabinet choices appear to come right out of the doublethink that ruled Orwell's dystopian society. In Orwell's book, the Ministry of Plenty rationed essentials while the Ministry of Truth manufactured falsehoods. Trump's choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is perhaps the most extreme of Trump's cabinet nominees.

The lesson for Democrats from the Republican coup in North Carolina is that public education is a cornerstone of our democracy, and closely related to the fight for voting rights, racial justice, and a more equal society.

Last Tuesday, the U.S. Education Department published its biennial civil rights report on public schools, representing the actual experiences of more than 50 million students in nearly every one of the nation’s 95,000 public schools. The report highlighted rampant absenteeism and stark racial disparities in not only how Black, Latino, and Native American students are disciplined but also in their access to experienced teachers and advanced math and science courses.

California has become ground zero for the national battle over charter school expansion. Some of America’s richest individuals and largest foundations are pouring resources into what critics view as the privatization of public education. Based on six months of reporting and interviews with experts, elected officials, educators and advocates on both sides of the debate, “Failing the Test” is a comprehensive portrait of how charter schools are changing public education.

Public schools in recent years have sustained assaults from believers in the privatization of the public education system. The powers that be plan a data-based reinvention of teacher education that will require the closing, or reinvention of colleges of teacher education. If these plans go through, a majority of the nation's teachers and teacher educators could lose their jobs in the next 10 years, replaced by people who will largely be temp workers-making minimum wages