DeVos Offers False Choices To Our Nation’s Parents
Across Arizona and the political spectrum opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee, Betsy DeVos, is strong. Parents, teachers and education activists alike share concerns about DeVos due to her support for the highly controversial “blended learning” as well as her allegiance to private education.
From the Badass Teachers Association to Mommy Lobby AZ, DeVos, a billionaire education activist, has united normally divided groups. Although they have their own reasons, the groups are united on the belief that currently school choice is a fallacy, and DeVos lacks the real-life experience to understand why that is the case.
She Might Not Like Common Core, But DeVos Loves The Elements
For conservative leaning groups like Mommy Lobby AZ, DeVos’ support for blended learning is a deal breaker. Despite her recent claim that she is not a fan of Common Core, DeVos has invested in the very elements that make Common Core as despised as it is.
Case in point, according to the Missouri Education Watchdog:
DeVos supports allowing big technology companies to data mine children, 50,000 data points per hour, without parents knowing about it or ever seeing how the data are shared, used and profiled.
DeVos is Chair of The Philanthropy Round Table, a group that focuses on Venture Capital Philanthropy (and making “serious money“) and also promotes computer-based data mining and as an added bonus, this group Chaired by Devos is also excited about Common Core.
DeVos may be a philanthropist, but the data ming she promotes serves industry far more than it will ever serve kids and teachers in classrooms.
Last year when parents sought protections against the data mining of their kids, Arizona Rep. Bob Thorpe (R) came up against the high priced lobbyists for Amazon and Google and the chambers of commerce. The groups weighed-in not because they care about the quality of education as much as they care about the data generated from programs like blended learning……
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A BATS Reading List to Learn About Betsy DeVos
By dianeravitch
Here are some suggested readings from the BATS:
Here are some pieces you can read about DeVos. She is NO friend to public education and has been attacking public education in Michigan for over a decade.
Here is what the teachers of Michigan say: http://www.mea.org/aft-michigan-and-mea-presidents-respond-selection-betsy-devos-us-secretary-education
Chalkbeat reports what you should know about DeVos: https://medium.com/@Chalkbeat/what-you-should-know-about-betsy-devos-trumps-education-secretary-pick-and-what-her-choice-7990d856318#.i1svfc7a1
Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/23/trump-nominates-true-enemy-public-schools-education-secretary
To read more — A BATS Reading List to Learn About Betsy DeVos — click here