Betsy DeVos Personally Saves Philly Student from a Government… Charter School(?)
In his February 04, 2020, State of the Union (SOTU), President Donald Trump presented a Philadelphia student with a scholarship paid for “personally” by US ed sec, Betsy Devos, all in the name of “rescuing” a student “trapped in failing government schools.”
Turns out this student attends a Philly charter school, MaST III, which just opened for the 2019-20 school year.
So, this student is trapped in nothing. As proof positive of non-trappedness, the child’s mother, Stephanie Davis, said as much in this February 07, 2020, Philadelphia Inquirer story:
“I don’t view MaST as a school you want to get out of at all. I view it as a great opportunity,” Davis said.
But Davis’ daughter does not attend what DeVos calls a “government school.” This child attends a charter school. So, DeVos is personally paying for a child to possibly leave a charter school to return to a private school she once attended.
But there’s more: DeVos’ US Dept of Ed gave MaST a $1.3M charter school grant in 2019.
https://twitter.com/NEPCtweet/status/1226679607283208192
DeVos’ office tried to salvage the saved-from-a-charter-school snafu, but the explanation does nothing to remedy the situation. From the Inquirer:
Asked why Janiyah was selected for a scholarship despite already attending a school in a high-performing charter network, Angela Morabito, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education, said, “Education freedom is about going to the best school for your child. Even the ‘best’ school, as ranked by statistics and averages, isn’t the best fit for every child. Each of the 50,000 kids waiting for a new opportunity in Pennsylvania has different needs and goals, let alone the millions of students across America stuck in a school that isn’t right for them.”
So, is this ramble a concession that a failing school could be a “best fit” for some children, and that even a DeVos-despised, so-called “government school” might be a “best fit”?
Nothing about DeVos supports such a position– until post-SOTU face-saving is required.
Fifty thousand kids supposedly “waiting for a new opportunity in Pennsylvania,” and DeVos’ office cannot find a single one for her big SOTU moment.
Instead, she pays for a voucher to “save” a student from a charter chain amply funded by her own Dept of Ed.
Priceless.
Betsy DeVos
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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of two other books: A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?. You should buy these books. They’re great. No, really.
deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog 
I think F. Scott Fitzgerald might have been wrong about the rich, and deep down they know it.
There are ‘smart’ people and ‘not so smart’ people, and being ‘smart’ in one way doesn’t make you all that ‘smart’ in another (just ask Linus Pauling). But, ‘smartness’ has to do with philosophy and problem-solving, not wealth.
Also, there are the ‘rich’ and the ‘not so rich’. The ‘rich’ are very similar to you and me. Some are ‘smart’ in certain areas, others are ‘not so smart’. The ‘rich’, however, feel the need to justify their wealth and, thus, they invent the myth of intrinsic brilliance, or ‘God’s blessing’, or something even more ridiculous to cover their embarrassment. Then, they suppress their unease to the point that they consider their ‘superiority’ to be a ‘truth’. The dumber they are, the more easily they become arrogant. The smarter they are, the more humble they become.
We simply put up with it. Why?
Your misguided stab at Pauling proves that you are not smart in any conceivable way.
Because people who slander Pauling (a double Nobel laureate) as “not so smart in another way” or worse as some deluded idiot are the criminal medical establishment and its countless mindless non-smart quackwatch shills, lackeys, and trolls, something which they been doing for decades and continue doing it (as you exemplify). No wonder because it is this highly corrupt allopathic medical mob that has been “falsifying” Pauling’s valid work with vitamin C supplementation by resorting to data distortions and lies — read the scholarly article “2 Big Lies: No Vitamin Benefits & Supplements Are Very Dangerous” by Rolf Hefti
But you can’t discredit the facts with lies. It only exposes and discredits the liars (see linked piece above).
I don’ t think I called Pauling a ‘deluded idiot’. Instead, I point out that his promotion of vitamin C was misguided. He did very good work in INORGANIC chemistry involving chemical bonding, for which he justly got the Nobel. However, his work in biochemistry (vitamin C) was such that none of his ‘results’ and speculations could be reproduced in well-constructed double-blind studies.
Nevertheless, Pauling pushed his opinions as if they were scientific fact when they were of little demonstrable value, and people believed him because he was a ‘Great Man’. Such behavior on his part is about as ‘unscientific’ as I can imagine. His work on ‘orthomolecular medicine’ was pure, non-reproducible boondoggle.
So, Pauling was a giant when it came to understanding the nature of chemical bonds, but came a cropper when he decided to enter nutritional science/medicine. Expertise in one area doesn’t make you a genius in another.
Devos was duped by the speech writers for Trump who…duh…likely are the same ones who wrote his inaugural address claiming students were learning nothing in our schools.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.