Portside

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.

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.

In search of answers, many of us ask our kids to "Google" something. These so-called digital natives, who've never known a world without screens, are the household's resident fact-checkers. If anyone can find the truth, we assume, they can...Don't be so sure.

Betsy and Dick DeVos come from a family with a $5.1 billion net worth. Mother Jones called the DeVos clan "the new Kochs."

The closure of ITT Tech should be a warning to other educational institutions looking to make a dime at the expense of students.

The achievement has gap steadily increased under your mismanagement as you and your appointees at CPS made one disastrous decision after another, in defiance of the evidence and research on educational practices. You have made it increasingly difficult for principals and teachers to provide strong academic programs for our students.

Until this year, Texas law allowed anyone with a Concealed Handgun License to carry a loaded hidden gun on campus, but not inside buildings. As of Aug. 1, 2016, a new law allows concealed handguns in college and university buildings. We're about to find out what difference guns in the classroom make in the relationships of students, faculty and staff – and in the character of higher education.

The resolution isn’t a change in policy. But it strengthens the organization’s stance from 2010 and 2014 against charters.

Although it has been more than 60 years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision establishing that separate schools for white students and black students are not equal, schools in the U.S. remain very economically and racially segregated.