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betsy devos
Governor Mills Stood up for Students and Survivors—Who Will Join Her?
Rather than descend into reactionary advocacy that centers an untrustworthy, increasingly fascist government, we must go above and beyond Title IX, standing up for actionable, lasting solutions to sex-based discrimination in schools.
Mar 27, 2025
“Are you going to comply with that?”
The question came at a bipartisan governors’ meeting, lobbed unceremoniously by U.S. President Donald Trump toward Gov. Janet Mills of Maine. Gov. Mills is one of the few representatives of any political party or institution to defy a recent executive order barring transgender students from women’s sports—and to stand firmly and vocally against the weaponization of Title IX to advance a bigoted, anti-trans agenda.
“I’m complying with the state and federal laws,” she replied. And then—“See you in court.”
Even as we identify and invest in alternate approaches to protecting students from gender-based discrimination, we cannot grant right-wing politicians leeway to weaponize Title IX for their own political gain.
The exchange, though brief, and the rushed and retaliatory federal investigation that followed, echoed far beyond the White House as a rare but critical example of how state, local, and school officials must stand up for students in the absence of adequate federal protections against sex discrimination. And those federal protections have never been adequate.
It is high time to recognize that in practice—and without states and schools moving beyond compliance to true advocacy for their students—Title IX has never offered comprehensive, accessible solutions to gender-based violence. I should know: I’ve experienced Title IX’s failings as a student, an organizer, and a policy advocate working to change how schools treat—and advocate for—survivors.
I was a college student in the Obama years, during what should have been a progressive “golden age” for Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in publicly funded schools. The reality on the ground was marked less by progress than by confusion and chaos. When my peers sought support from our Title IX office, administrators called their reasonable requests for support “too difficult” to address. Without on-campus advocates, nearly 40% of survivors who reported abuse during this period experienced a substantial disruption in their education due to retaliation, institutional betrayal, and being pushed out of schools. Many survivors stayed silent.
When Betsy DeVos gutted Title IX protections during the first Trump administration, I joined the survivor- and youth-led project Know Your IX, where I worked with student activists whose horror stories under the Trump administration’s Title IX rule sounded eerily familiar. Survivors experiencing traumatic investigations dropped out of school—paying off student loans for a degree they would never get. Medical school students chose not to report abuse for fear of losing professional opportunities. Young people who had experienced dating abuse developed new mental health challenges, and their schools refused to grant accommodations. And though Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, Trump-era guidance on how schools should enforce Title IX persisted throughout nearly the entirety of his presidency. President Trump moved to officially reinstate DeVos-era guidance, after appointing people who have caused sexual harm or been complicit in it (including Secretary of Education Linda McMahon) to the highest positions of power in our country. If it wasn’t already clear, it should be staggeringly so now: We cannot rely on the federal government to save us.
Rather than descend into reactionary advocacy that centers an untrustworthy, increasingly fascist government, we must go above and beyond Title IX, standing up for actionable, lasting solutions to sex-based discrimination in schools. Local organizing at K-12 schools and college campuses led by students and survivors offers one path forward. We can also fight for stronger state anti-discrimination policies that reflect the needs of marginalized students. And we can empower student groups with resources and training to support their peers in the absence of federal or administrative protections.
Most importantly, it is time for schools to take responsibility for protecting their students and act accordingly—regardless of state and federal policy, or how the president decides to interpret the 37 words that make up the statute of Title IX. While federally funded schools are required to comply with Trump’s Title IX rule, they can and should create separate anti-discrimination policies that fill in the gaps of the current Title IX rule. We should encourage schools to go above and beyond what federal law requires to protect students from sexual violence, and respond with care when it occurs.
Of course, in the absence of strong, federal legislation codifying students’ protections and schools’ responsibility to address gender-based discrimination, “sending education back to the states” creates an inequitable patchwork of civil rights protections, resulting in even more students experiencing traumatic disruptions to their education. While investing in school- and state-level organizing, we must build wide networks of support and mutual aid that persist no matter how hostile the environment. Groups like Know Your IX, now a project of the national youth activism organization Advocates for Youth, will continue to organize alongside brilliant and dedicated survivors and student activists holding their schools accountable and fighting for survivor-centered solutions.
Even as we identify and invest in alternate approaches to protecting students from gender-based discrimination, we cannot grant right-wing politicians leeway to weaponize Title IX for their own political gain. We must join Gov. Mills and shout from the rooftops that bigoted, transphobic attempts to attack marginalized young people through education policy will never be a solution to this country’s epidemic of sexual harassment and assault. We must hold strong in the face of increasingly brazen attempts from federal officials to curb students’ rights and retaliate against dissidence. If lawmakers actually cared about women and girls, they would bolster Title IX protections—not attempt to dismantle them.
Title IX was always the floor, not the ceiling. Now, it’s time to aim for the stars. Student survivors, LGBTQI+ youth, and pregnant and parenting people deserve nothing less.
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Sanders Report Details Plot by Right-Wing Billionaires to 'Sabotage' Public Education
"Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education."
Jun 25, 2024
Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.
The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—"ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers."
Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, "AFC's political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers," the report adds.
The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education. The Bradley Foundation, which has been knee-deep in efforts to privatize education in Wisconsin and across the country, spent $7.5 million in 2022 "to fund 34 state affiliates of the State Policy Network to push conservative policy agendas, including privatizing education, and $8.3 million to building a youth movement to 'win the American Culture War.'"
"The Koch-sponsored group, American Encore, has funneled substantial amounts into state governor races and ballot initiatives around the country, including more than $1.4 million to elect Arizona's former governor Doug Ducey in 2014 (who led the efforts to create the nation's first universal private school voucher)," the report adds.
"For too long, there's been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable."
The analysis also names billionaires Jess Yass of Susquehanna International Group, Richard Uihlein of Uline, and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, all of whom have recently donated to the School Freedom Fund—a PAC that supports voucher programs and shuttering the U.S. Education Department.
School voucher programs
disproportionately benefit wealthy families, analyses have shown, while undercutting the goal of serving all students within a community.
"Over the past decade, there has been a coordinated effort on the part of right-wing billionaires to undermine, dismantle, and sabotage our nation's public schools and to privatize our education system," Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement. " That is absolutely unacceptable."
"We can no longer tolerate billionaires and multinational corporations receiving massive tax breaks and subsidies while children in America are forced to go to understaffed, underresourced, and underfunded public schools," Sanders continued. "On this 70th anniversary year of Brown v. Board of Education, let us recommit to creating an education system that works for all of our people, not just the wealthy few."
The new report, authored by the Senate HELP Committee's majority staff, comes days after Sanders presided over a hearing at which a pair of public school teachers decried the low educator pay and lack of resources plaguing schools across the U.S. and threatening the foundations of the country's public education system.
The committee's report shows that while most states have chronically underfunded their public schools, spending on voucher programs that subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars has surged across the country. Between 2008 and 2019, according to a recent analysis cited in the report, Florida ramped up spending on voucher programs by 313% while "decreasing per-pupil funding of public schooling by 12%."
"The expansion of private school voucher programs forces very real tradeoffs. Money spent on private school vouchers could instead be used to hire teachers, raise wages, hire school counselors, and invest in high-quality academics for students," reads the new report, which estimates that "Arizona could hire 15,730 more public K-12 teachers with the money it is instead spending on private school vouchers."
The report calls on Congress to help reverse the trend of billionaire-backed school privatization by investing more in public education—including early childhood education and community schools—and by passing Sanders' legislation to set the pay floor for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000 a year.
The report also recommends passage of the
College for All Act, a Sanders-led bill that would make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students from households making less than $250,000 a year.
"As the richest country in history, the United States should have the best education system in the world," Sanders' report reads. "Our public education system is not perfect—it is underfunded and racially and socioeconomically segregated. Our educators are not respected or paid nearly what they deserve."
"Massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations are being prioritized over opportunities to progressively raise revenue to support social services and public education," the report continues. "Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education. This requires adequate and equitable funding and addressing structural challenges in our public schools."
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Conservative Philanthropy's Plan for a Corporate Coup
What if every federal department was run by Betsy DeVos?
Apr 25, 2024
Imagine it’s Monday, January 20, 2025, and by the end of the day, somewhere between 50,000 to hundreds of thousands of the 2 million federal government employees are summarily out of a job. A skeleton crew made up of a list of far-right, free-market conservatives excited to carry out an unpopular anti-democratic agenda has replaced them. Their marching orders are to cater to big business and rot every institution established to protect our lives, from education to transportation, from housing to labor to environmental protections to healthcare and more.
This is not a far-fetched dystopian nightmare.
It’s a plan outlined in a more than 800-page document from the conservative Heritage Foundation called Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership.
The Heritage Foundation is compiling and vetting a list of thousands of extremist operatives like DeVos who have little to no experience running programs for the American people, but are eager to wreak similar havoc across our entire government
This supposed “Mandate for Leadership” was drafted in collaboration with more than 50 organizations and 360 so-called “experts” from the conservative movement to promote policies based on free enterprise and limited government. If implemented, the plan would gut the governmental agencies that should be working for the people and replace anyone left standing with corporate shills.
What’s In Store If Heritage DeVos-ifies America
What would the unraveling of these democratic cornerstones look like? Imagine if every department in the U.S. was run by a Betsy DeVos. As a reminder, former President Donald Trump appointed DeVos as the secretary of education despite her having no experience with public education as a student, teacher, or leader. Her sole qualification was loyalty to a free-market agenda and a vision to privatize public schools.
Among the disastrous policies she advanced, DeVos:
- Proposed a $7B cut to public education with a significant portion of that defunding aid for students with disabilities;
- Advocated for a voucher program to siphon money out of public schools into private hands; and
- Proposed increasing guns in schools by using funding intended for student enrichment to purchase weapons for teachers.
The Heritage Foundation is compiling and vetting a list of thousands of extremist operatives like DeVos who have little to no experience running programs for the American people, but are eager to wreak similar havoc across our entire government from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice and more.
Anti-Democratic Philanthropy
Philanthropy isn’t neutral. Organizations like Heritage exemplify how the philanthropic sector is weaponized to rig systems in favor of their donors' quest for political and economic power. Heritage donors receive huge tax breaks on the millions of dollars they give to fund this work. Not only do the American people lose out on those tax dollars that should be funding our schools—among other things—but Heritage is more than happy to conceal those donor identities. I couldn't find their donors online and they don't seem to be in their 990s. Their donors may not want to be publically linked to this anti-democratic plan, but Project 2025 is their path to roll back the remaining safeguards protecting our communities from corporate greed. If they have their way, we can thank the Heritage Foundation’s nameless donors for more toxins in our water, fewer teachers in our schools, and fewer protections for workers.
Public Harms vs. Public Goods
Conservative initiatives like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 are the antithesis of the vision the Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) and our grant partners have for the future. In response to their authoritarian agenda, nonprofits and donors alike should collectively double down to use our resources to resist pressure from those groups that are clearly at odds with the work needed to build a just society.
At MCF, we use our endowment to advance a vision of a government that digs deeper to serve everyday people and prioritizes safeguarding the natural resources, educational institutions, and infrastructure we rely on to live lives of dignity, health, and well-being.
Instead of slashing government jobs or “slitting throats” on day one as one of our government officials so plainly phrased it, the future we’re fighting for is one where well-paid, dignified public jobs help people economically obtain what they need and deserve to live good lives. We know that advancing the unfinished business of racial and economic justice is generations in the making. We’re committed to funding the grassroots organizations building community power to make it possible.
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'They Have a Lot of Money... We Have the People': Sanders Rallies for Brandon Johnson in Chicago
"Which side are you on?" Sanders asked at the packed rally. "Are you on the side of working people, or are you on the side of the speculators and billionaires? And I know which side Brandon is on."
Mar 31, 2023
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders stumped for progressive Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson late Thursday, imploring the city's voters to turn out in record numbers to overcome what he described as the powerful establishment forces backing conservative Democrat Paul Vallas.
"Our job on Tuesday is to make sure we have the largest voter turnout this city has ever seen," Sanders (I-Vt.) told the crowd gathered at the University of Illinois Chicago days ahead of the April 4 runoff. "This is going to be a close election, and the deciding factor will be voter turnout."
A Northwestern University poll released earlier this week showed the race is in a dead heat, with Johnson and Vallas each receiving 44% support and 12% of voters still undecided.
"Brandon's opponent and the other side—they have a lot of money," the Vermont senator said Thursday. "That's what always happens when you take on the establishment. They have the money. They've got a lot of power. But you know what we have? We have the people."
The rally came after new financial disclosures showed that a super PAC with close connections to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently spent nearly $60,000 on digital media supporting Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools who has worked to privatize education in his home city as well as New Orleans and Philadelphia.
"The fundamental issue, the deep down issue, is: Which side are you on?" Sanders said Thursday night. "Are you on the side of working people, or are you on the side of the speculators and billionaires? And I know which side Brandon is on."
While Sanders didn't explicitly mention the DeVos-tied super PAC's support for Vallas' campaign during Thursday's rally, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten did, saying it "tells you everything you need to know about" Vallas.
In a statement earlier Thursday, Weingarten said that "Paul Vallas’ goal of defunding public schools and dividing parents against teachers makes him precisely the kind of candidate who would appeal to a fellow wrecker like Betsy DeVos—a person who's devoted her life to ending public education as we know it."
"From Chicago to Philadelphia to New Orleans," Weingarten added, "Vallas waged a craven campaign to voucherize and pauperize, just like DeVos tried—and failed—to do when she served as Donald Trump's education secretary."
Watch Thursday's rally:
Johnson, a longtime educator and organizer, also called attention to the Illinois Federation for Children PAC's spending on the race during a candidate forum late Thursday.
"Betsy DeVos has inserted herself and her resources into my opponent's coffers," Johnson said.
Vallas countered that he has "never had any conversations or contacts with Betsy DeVos."
"Our campaign has not received any money from her," Vallas said, citing the often vanishingly thin barrier separating so-called "independent expenditures" by super PACs and direct donations to political campaigns.
In addition to the DeVos-connected spending, Vallas has also received financial support from "conservative contributors and prominent Republicans," the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this month.
"Vallas' largest contributor was golf course developer Michael Keiser, who has given him $700,000," the Tribune noted. "Keiser previously contributed $11,200 to former President Donald Trump, a Republican. Vallas has taken money from John Canning, a Chicago private equity executive who has given to many politicians locally but also national Republicans, and Noel Moore, who has given to Trump and Texas Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz."
Johnson's biggest contributors, by contrast, have been unions representing teachers and service workers.
"When you take dollars from Trump supporters and try to cast yourself as a part of the progressive movement, man—sit down,” Johnson said at Thursday night's rally.
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DeVos-Tied PAC Spends $60,000 in Support of Chicago School Privatizer Paul Vallas
"Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas' candidacy, and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas' education agendas," said Illinois Families for Public Schools.
Mar 30, 2023
A super PAC with close ties to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—one of the nation's most fervent supporters of school privatization—has taken an interest in Chicago's April 4 mayoral runoff, spending nearly $60,000 in support of notorious school privatizer Paul Vallas as the contest heads into its final stretch.
Vallas, a right-wing Democrat who previously served as the head of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), is taking on Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, a longtime educator and public school champion whose campaign has been endorsed by prominent national progressives including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The Illinois Federation for Children PAC, which is bankrolled by the DeVos-backed American Federation for Children Action Fund, recently spent $59,385 on digital media supporting Vallas, according to new campaign finance disclosures.
The Illinois super PAC's bare-bones website states that "families should have the choice to enroll their children in the best school to meet their needs, whether it’s a district-assigned public school, homeschool, public charter, private, virtual, or blended-learning school," adding that "this election cycle will be one of the most important in the history of Illinois' school choice movement."
The group has received $465,000 from the American Federation for Children Action Fund, including a recent donation of $65,000. (The American Federation for Children Action Fund is an affiliate of the DeVos-founded American Federation for Children.)
Spotlighting the super PAC's outlay in Chicago's mayoral race, the advocacy group Illinois Families for Public Schools (IFPS) said in a statement that while "DeVos has not endorsed Vallas, Vallas' education plans for Chicago's school system are directly aligned with the DeVos agenda of school privatization, one she supported as secretary of education and promotes through her national network of advocacy organizations and PACs: defunding and dismantling public school systems and redirecting public funds via programs like vouchers to private schools."
"Vallas voices his support for 'a reconstituted system in which parents get to direct the per-pupil public dollars to the school (or education model) of their choosing'... The education platform on Vallas' website calls for 'dismantling the central administration' of CPS," the group continued. "These are exactly the policy goals that DeVos and American Federation for Children are advocating for: 'fund students not systems' and 'dollars must follow students.'"
"As secretary of education, DeVos' education policies were harmful to public schools on a national scale," IFPS added. "Chicago voters should know that DeVos supports Vallas' candidacy, and that there is no daylight between DeVos and Vallas' education agendas."
Johnson, by contrast, has pledged to strengthen Chicago's underfunded public schools. The progressive candidate's top donors are the Chicago Teachers Union PAC and the American Federation of Teachers' Committee on Political Education.
The Illinois Federation for Children PAC's intervention in Chicago's mayoral race is part of a broader assault on public education financed in part by DeVos, a billionaire who has used her fortune to erode public education in her home state of Michigan and nationwide.
NBC News reported Thursday that DeVos' American Federation for Children "poured about $9 million into state elections last year, backing nearly 200 candidates."
"Now, some of those candidates are pushing a wave of legislation boosting DeVos' longtime goal: subsidizing private schools with public dollars," the outlet continued. "Using at least $2.5 million from DeVos and her husband, the American Federation for Children has played a pivotal role in getting what supporters call 'school choice' policies passed into law in at least three states and introduced in several more."
The American Federation for Children's board includes infamous political figures such as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), both of whom are outspoken supporters of school privatization.
Lieberman—a former Democrat-turned-Independent who is widely reviled by progressives for his role in tanking the prospects of a public option in healthcare more than a decade ago—introduced DeVos at her Senate confirmation hearing in 2017, praising the Trump nominee as a "purpose-driven team builder."
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Teachers Union Leader Calls for Defending Public Education From 'Dangerous' GOP Attacks
"A great nation does not fear people being educated," said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.
Mar 28, 2023
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten on Tuesday defended the egalitarian legacy and goals of public education and outlined a participatory plan to strengthen it nationwide as right-wing lawmakers intensify their long-standing assault on the institution.
"Attacks on public education are not new," the leader of the 1.7 million-member union said in an address to the National Press Club. "The difference today is that the attacks are intended to destroy it. To make it a battlefield, a political cudgel."
"We will continue to fight this defunding of our public schools and this dividing of our communities," said Weingarten. "But we also must do better to address the learning loss and disconnection we are seeing in our young people. And we can. We can make every public school a school where parents want to send their kids, educators want to work, and all students thrive."
The AFT president implored people to stand up for the future of public education, warning that its very existence is now threatened by a Republican-led effort to dismantle and privatize the schools attended by 90% of children in the United States.
"The Betsy DeVos wing of the school privatization movement is methodically working its plan," said Weingarten, referring to the Trump administration's pro-voucher education secretary. "Starve public schools of the funds they need to succeed. Criticize them for their shortcomings. Erode trust in public schools by stoking fear and division, including attempting to pit parents against teachers. Replace them with private, religious, online, and home schools."
"It's an extremist scheme by a very vocal minority of Americans," Weingarten noted. "And it's not what parents or the public want."
"We can make every public school a school where parents want to send their kids, educators want to work, and all students thrive."
According to Weingarten: "This year alone, 29 state legislatures are considering bills to either create or expand existing voucher programs. This is on top of the 72 voucher and tax credit programs in 33 states already subsidizing private and home schooling, costing billions every year. Voucher programs are proliferating even though research shows that, on average, vouchers negatively affect achievement—the declines are worse than pandemic learning loss. In fact, vouchers have caused 'some of the largest academic drops ever measured in the research record.'"
"And then there are the culture wars," said Weingarten. "What started as fights over pandemic-era safety measures has morphed into fearmongering: False claims that elementary and secondary schools are teaching critical race theory; disgusting, unfounded claims that teachers are grooming and indoctrinating students; and pronouncements that public schools push a 'woke' agenda, even though they can't or won't define what they mean. Banning books and bullying vulnerable children. School board meetings descending into screaming matches. This is an organized and dangerous effort to undermine public schools."
Last month, PEN America revealed that GOP officials across the United States introduced 84 educational gag orders during the first six weeks of 2023. This comes after Republican lawmakers put forth 190 bills designed to thwart classroom discussions of past and present injustices—including several proposals to establish so-called "tip lines" that would enable parents to punish school districts or individual teachers—in dozens of states in 2021 and 2022. Over the past two years, 19 laws aimed at silencing instruction about gender, sexuality, and racism were enacted in more than a dozen GOP-controlled states, plus eight measures imposed without legislation.
Moreover, the American Library Association reported last week that the far-right's campaign to ban books containing LGBTQ+ themes or stories about people of color has fueled an unprecedented rise in censorship attempts around the country, with 2,571 unique titles facing challenges in 2022, up 38% from the previous year.
"Their end goal," Weingarten said Tuesday during her speech, is "destroying public education as we know it, atomizing and balkanizing education in America, bullying the most vulnerable among us, and leaving the students with the greatest needs with the most meager resources."
To improve student outcomes and reclaim "the purpose and promise of public education," Weingarten shared the following four-part plan:
1. Opening 25,000 more community schools by 2025
As AFT explained in a statement, these schools "wrap academic counseling services, nutrition services, primary health and dental care, and much more around traditional schools to transform them into hubs that connect families and students with supports to learn and live."
2. Expanding experiential learning opportunities for all students, including career and technical education
According to Weingarten: "Experiential learning embeds the things that make kids want to be in school. The excitement of learning that is deeply engaging, and the joy of being together, especially after the isolation of the last few years. The camaraderie and responsibility of working together on a team. And in the age of AI and ChatGPT, this type of learning is critical to being able to think and write, solve problems, apply knowledge, and discern fact from fiction."
3. Reviving the teaching profession
With nearly 400,000 teachers "leaving the profession each year" and the teacher pipeline collapsing "as college students and career-changers choose not to go into education," Weingarten called for "treating educators as the professionals they are, with appropriate pay; time to plan and prepare for classes, to collaborate with colleagues, and to participate in meaningful professional development; and the power to make day-to-day classroom decisions."
4. Deepening partnerships with parents and community members
According to AFT, the union "has ramped up its Powerful Partnerships Institute, distributing 27 grants to locals totaling more than $1.5 million. For example, Montana is engaging thousands of public education-supporting families and educators across the state around a shared agenda. And New Haven is working with educators, families, and students on equitable school funding across Connecticut."
As part of AFT's Campaign for Our Shared Future, Weingarten announced the launch of a "Freedom to Teach and Learn" hotline for students, parents, teachers, and the public to document instances of censorship.
"Poll after poll has shown that parents and voters don't want politicized culture wars, they want schools and administrators to focus on what kids and communities need," AFT said. "The hotline—888-873-7227—will serve as a clearinghouse for reports of political interference. If Americans see something, they should say something."
In Weingarten's words, "It's a place to call if you've been told to remove a book from the curriculum or from the library, if you've been told that there are topics that can't be discussed in your classes or that you cannot teach honestly and appropriately, or if politicians in your district or state are targeting vulnerable student groups to score political points."
Alluding to AFT's four-point plan for greater investment and engagement, Weingarten said that "this is our agenda."
"But this can't just be the work of our union or of school staff and schools alone," she stressed. "This is the work of a great nation—to ensure that our children's basic human needs are met so they are ready to learn to their full potential."
"This can't just be the work of our union or of school staff and schools alone. This is the work of a great nation—to ensure that our children's basic human needs are met so they are ready to learn to their full potential."
"Our public schools shouldn't be pawns for politicians' ambitions. Or defunded and destroyed by ideologues," Weingarten continued. "We are at a crossroads: fear and division, or hope and opportunity."
"A great nation does not fear people being educated," she added. "A great nation does not fear pluralism. A great nation chooses freedom, democracy, equality, and opportunity. All of that starts in our public schools."
The labor leader opened with a moment of silence to honor the six people killed Monday in a shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville—just one of 130 mass shootings in the United States in 2023.
Lamenting the nation's "epidemic" of gun violence, Weingarten renewed AFT's demand for "commonsense gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons"—a policy that helped reduce the number and severity of fatal mass shootings when it was in effect from 1994 to 2004.
Guns recently became the leading killer of children and teens in the United States. Research published last year found that approximately 26,000 kids could still be alive today if the U.S. had the same gun mortality rate as Canada.
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Communism Isn't What Terrifies the GOP? It's High-Quality and Well-Funded Public Education
Can you imagine a country where everyone was fully educated? People might actually become informed voters and demand freedom and justice for all! The idea absolutely terrifies the right.
Jan 10, 2023
Have you heard the latest Republican lie?
There are so many it’s hard to keep track, but here’s the newest one.
Public school teachers are turning their students into communists.
I’m not kidding.
That’s what they’re saying on far right blogs, podcasts and TV shows.
Everyone from Betsy DeVos to Ron DeSantis and the sober fellows of the Heritage Foundation are up in arms.
All because Mr. Singer wore a red sweater vest one day to class.
In matters of opinion, isn’t it better to tell students the facts and let them think for themselves about their relative virtues?
Not really, but that might have been a better provocation than the reality – which is all in far right pundits’ heads.
So for the GOP, it’s all about fear – what can you scare voters to believe that will shepherd them to support your agenda?
So to start with, Republicans want you to be terrified of public schools.
The reason?
They want you to have to pay to get your kids educated – but public schools give learning away for free to everyone – just for paying taxes.
Right-wingers would much rather make it all a business where the more you pay, the better the education your kids get. There’d be poor quality charter schools for those who can’t afford the entry fee, but the best of everything would be reserved for the kids of the rich and powerful whose parents would use school vouchers to offset some of their tuition at private institutions.
Public schools would undo all that – especially if they were adequately funded.
Can you imagine a country where everyone was fully educated!?
People might become informed voters and demand freedom and justice for all!
Lawmakers might have to create real policies, a platform, solutions – to actually govern!
So GOP operatives spread hysterical lies about public schools. They call them “government schools” as if that meant some imposed bureaucracy of outsiders and not what it actually does – schools governed by elected members of the community.
The lies and innuendo are never ending. Public school educators teach fake history where the civil rights movement was a good thing. They refuse to instill the truth of Creationism over fake Evolution. Teachers are pedophile groomers – never mind the actual Republican lawmakers charged with pedophilia and rape. And on and on and on.
Which brings us to the latest one – the new red scare that public school teachers are raising the next generation to hate Adam Smith and love Karl Marx.
The whole idea seems to have started with DeVos, the billionaire heiress and former Secretary of Education under President Donald Trump.
Robert Bluey, vice president of publishing for the Heritage Foundation, asked her a question on The Daily Signal Podcast (a Heritage Foundation mouthpiece) about the growing popularity of socialism among young people.
And it’s true, according to a 2018 Gallup poll, Americans aged 18 to 29 are almost as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%).
So on behalf of the right-wing think tank behind the critical race theory brouhaha, transphobic legislation, climate change denial and a host of other regressive causes, Bluey asked DeVos why young people aren’t as firmly championing capitalism as previous generations.
DeVos, of course, blamed teachers. She responded:
“I recall visiting a classroom not too long ago where one of the teachers was wearing a shirt that said “Find Your Truth,” suggesting that, of course, truth is a very fungible and mutable thing instead of focusing on the fact that there is objective truth and part of learning is actually pursuing that truth.”
This is a rather strange answer. It may be the case that there are absolute truths in the world, but economic theories certainly don’t qualify. In matters of opinion, isn’t it better to tell students the facts and let them think for themselves about their relative virtues?
Not for DeVos. Indoctrination apparently is just fine so long as you’re indoctrinating kids into the right things.
Tell them capitalism is great. Tell them socialism is terrible. Screw critical thinking.
The Heritage Foundation, at least, liked her answer, using it as a template to fund a plethora of stories about public schools – not just leaving the matter up to students to decide – but actually bullying kids into championing communism.
Douglas Blair, a Daily Signal producer, codified the idea in his article “I’m a Former Teacher. Here’s How Your Children Are Getting Indoctrinated in Leftist Ideology.”
In the text of article, Blair admits he was only “in education” for 4 years, but it seems he was not a full-time classroom teacher for most of that time. According to his Linked-In account, he was a French teacher for 9 months in a school in Portland, Oregon. Before that he was an Extracurricular Aide, an English Language Assistant and Language Immersion Counselor at various schools in the US and France.
His evidence of indoctrination reads like “Kids Say the Darndest Things – Republican Edition.”
For example, he says he asked an elementary school girl if she liked Winston Churchill, and she frowned calling Churchill racist.
I’m not sure why that’s so upsetting. Churchill led Great Britain through WWII, but he undeniably WAS a racist, too. Churchill said that he hated people with “slit eyes and pig tails.” To him, people from India were “the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans.” He admitted that he “did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people.”
So Blair’s examples of indoctrination come out to complaining that kids learned accurate history.
If only the GOP could use history and education to change minds instead of decrying them.
Florida Gov. DeSantis is giving it a try. In 2022, he signed a law requiring schools in the sunshine state to actively teach about the horrors of communism.
That’s right. Whether teachers need to or not, they have to spend at least 45 minutes on it every November.
“We want to make sure that every year folks in Florida, but particularly our students, will learn about the evils of communism. The dictators that have led communist regimes and the hundreds of millions of individuals who suffered and continue to suffer under the weight of this discredited ideology,” DeSantis said, adding that “a lot of young people don’t really know that much” about the political ideology.
At first blush, this may sound like a good idea. More historical knowledge is a good thing, but it’s the context that makes this troubling.
Florida Republicans already have passed a battalion of laws telling educators what they CANNOT teach.
So you can’t teach about racial issues including the history of slavery if it makes any student “feel uncomfortable.” Math books are censored from depicting “prohibited topics.” You can’t talk about a wide range of human sexuality including LGBTQ people because of the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
But you’d better teach about how bad communism is! Or else!
First, this is the very definition of a GOVERNMENT SCHOOL – the legislature dictating what teachers teach on a given day and not trusting them to do their own jobs.
Second, why single out communism? Certainly it has lead to horrors and misery, but so has capitalism. Are we to teach about the terrors of rampant greed, sweatshops, wars for oil, runaway inequality? After all, students in impoverished neighborhoods going to underfunded schools are actual victims of free enterprise, not collectivism. The free hand of the market is soaked in blood, too.
Third, there’s the subtext. This sounds to me like an invitation to conflate communism with socialism (which are two different ideas with different histories) and to champion one ideology over another.
Finally, let’s not forget this all comes from state law. It’s politics, not pedagogy, and in politics it’s only indoctrination when someone else does it.
So are public school teachers really molding their students into young Bolsheviks?
I seriously doubt it.
Economic theory rarely comes up in math, reading or science. Maybe it comes up occasionally in social studies.
In my middle school language arts classes, we discuss all kinds of things that come out of the books we’re reading.
Sometimes economic inequality comes out of S. E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders” or Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” When we read Lois Lowry’s “The Giver” the concept of distribution of resources is broached.
In each case, I encourage my students to think about the problems from the stories, the solutions offered in the narratives and to discuss the matter with classmates. We hold Socratic Seminars and write critical essays. For “The Giver,” students work in groups to create their own utopias – you’d be surprised how many are socialist, though there are also a number of capitalist republics, dictatorships, and anarchies. Kids love anarchy.
[Education] is one of the chief engines of change, and nothing can truly stop that. If Republicans think they can, they’re in for a shock.
And I admit it – I encourage my students to think for themselves. I try not to give them my answers – my truths.
Facts are facts and opinions are opinions.
I would be a bad teacher if I forced my conclusions on my students.
So why ARE young people increasingly more critical of capitalism these days and more friendly toward socialism?
I’d say it’s because of the income inequality they see in the world around them.
Despite Republican’s claims, capitalism is not a perfect system. To be fair, no system is. But criticizing capitalism is not a bad thing, and finding value in aspects of socialism is no crime.
To achieve a better world, we have to do more than simply recreate the one in which we live.
That’s why education is so important. It is one of the chief engines of change, and nothing can truly stop that.
If Republicans think they can, they’re in for a shock.
Perhaps they should have paid more attention in school.
Or exposed their opinions to more rigorous critical thinking…
Nah!
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If Corinthian Student Debt Can Be Wiped Out--All of It Can
The entire system is predatory. Backed by the Department of Education, it has pushed millions of us into a debt trap while Wall Street profited.
Jun 04, 2022
I'm incredibly happy to hear the announcement that debt is being wiped out for defrauded Corinthian students. This should have happened in 2015 when this predatory school folded. Instead, it took almost a decade of vigorous grassroots organizing and legal maneuvering for borrowers to be relieved of crushing debt for worthless degrees.
This news is bittersweet. Those of us who attended other 'bad actor' schools are struggling, still waiting for relief. Even those with good paying jobs are often ten of thousands--or even hundreds of thousands of dollars--in debt, leaving them unable to purchase homes or revisit legitimate educational opportunities. It only gets worse from there.
If the debt for Corinthian students can be wiped out, all debt for Brooks students and other for-profit schools should and must be automatically and immediately eliminated too.
Twenty years ago this September, I enrolled at Brooks Institute in Ventura, CA, then owned by Career Education Corporation (CEC rebranded as Perdoceo after a 2019 settlement with 49 State Attorneys General).
The school is where I met my husband, but it was mired in controversy by the time I graduated with a BA in visual journalism. The school brushed it off. An undercover investigation in 2005 by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education stated "The Bureau has determined that an unconditional grant of approval to operate is not in the public interest."
CEC disputed the investigation and it was thrown out on a technicality. Years later, I discovered Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was a major investor in CEC and that her husband, Richard Blum, was a majority owner of both CEC and ITT. She used her lawmaking powers to influence deregulation of both the for-profit and student loan industries. She is the fourth-wealthiest senator in office, but that wealth is built off the backs of borrowers who attended one of her husband's predatory schools. Instead of protecting taxpayers, Congress was sending federal student aid to a school committing fraud that one member of Congress personally invested in. Yet here we are, still holding the bag.
Within a few years of graduating, and after being misled about forbearance, my household's mix of federal and high interest private student loans ballooned to half a million dollars. We were lied to about accreditation, being told credits would transfer to state schools. The job placement they promised was a joke. The best we could get were low-paying retail studio jobs. This is equivalent to a fast food job after I was promised "You could walk into National Geographic and get a job with Brooks on your resume" to justify the high cost of attendance.
In 2009 we were notified of a class action against CEC/Brooks for misleading its students. CEC settled the case without admitting any wrongdoing. My husband and I both received a check for $1200; but it didn't even cover a full month of student loan payments and stripped us of our right to take legal action in the future.
I have spent the last decade trying to figure out how this was allowed to happen. Aren't schools and government regulators supposed to have young students' best interests at heart? I connected over 2000 other borrowers from Brooks. I've gathered loan data from many of them and asked them to share how these loans have affected their lives over the long term. So far, I have interviewed 489 Brooks Borrowers who collectively hold well over $70 Million in student loan debt. There were approximately 22,000 students enrolled at Brooks during CEC's 16 years of ownership.
So far litigation hasn't helped. After Donald Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos intentionally derailed the process, a 2020 class action suit, with a named plaintiff who attended Brooks, was filed to force the Department of Education to resume the lawful processing of issuing relief to defrauded borrowers through the same process former students of Corinthian Colleges have used to get relief. Hundreds of thousands of defrauded borrowers from bad actors like ITT and the Art Institute, among others, are still waiting.
The ripples this debt has caused are deep and wide. This debt doesn't just affect the borrowers. Parents who cosigned or took out Parent Plus loans can't afford to retire. Relationships between cosigners and borrowers have become estranged. Due to shoddy accreditation practices, going back to school means starting over from scratch because credits do not transfer and most students maxed out student's loan eligibility, including GI benefits.
Many borrowers have faced housing and food insecurity. For most, their credit has been destroyed, they have difficulty renting, obtaining credit cards, or making any kind of purchase or signing a lease if a credit check is required. Some borrowers have decided they can't marry or have children due to their insurmountable debt. Those that have, struggle with passing down the generational trauma that comes with the shame of being scammed and left financially destitute. This debt is toxic and the Department of Education is liable.
We are facing midlife and retirement age with no savings or safety-net and inflation at our backs. We have been waiting years for relief. But federal loan cancellation will not be the end of our troubles, or our fight. Many of us have private loans, and while a few have seen relief through the Navient Settlement brought on by 39 state attorney general offices, which named CEC/Brooks as a bad actor, only a handful fit the small window of criteria for forgiveness.
If the debt for Corinthian students can be wiped out, all debt for Brooks students and other for-profit schools should and must be automatically and immediately eliminated too. In fact, all student debt should be erased no matter what school people attended. Our entire system is predatory and needs to be rebuilt. For decades, the Department of Education has pushed millions of us into a debt trap while Wall Street profited. Making students whole is the least they can do.
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Trump DOJ Casting Long Shadow Over Biden Admin: Analysis
The Biden administration "should adopt Trump's positions about as often as a stopped clock is accurate," the Revolving Door Project argues.
May 16, 2022
More than 16 months into Joe Biden's presidency, his Department of Justice and other agencies continue to defend and advance legal positions held by the Trump administration, an analysis by a leading government watchdog revealed Monday.
"One-third of the way through Biden's presidency, it's becoming clear how long a shadow the Biden administration is willing to let Trump-era legal positions cast."
Former President Donald Trump and his DOJ "consistently made a mockery of the law throughout his four years in power," the Center for Economic and Policy Research's Revolving Door Project asserted. "And while their laughable reasoning and indefensible positions were struck down at a historic rate, many cases were still waiting for Biden. Sixteen months into Biden's presidency, an alarming number remain, either in some form of pause or advancing forward with the Biden administration adopting Trump's position."
Revolving Door Project researcher Hannah Story Brown said in a statement that "one-third of the way through Biden's presidency, it's becoming clear how long a shadow the Biden administration is willing to let Trump-era legal positions cast."
She added that the president and Attorney General Merrick Garland's "adherence to an outdated and often breached norm of consistency between attorneys general is undermining this administration's deepest commitments even as Trump's judicial appointees continue to shred legal norms and sabotage democracy."
The Revolving Door Project analysis contains a detailed--but noncomprehensive--list highlighting the Biden administration's defense of Trump-era cases and positions across a wide range of subjects and departments.
The DOJ is defending Trump in a defamation lawsuit over a sexual assault accusation; is seeking to dismiss lawsuits against the former president and his officials for violently removing racial justice protestors ahead of a 2020 Washington, D.C. photo-op; and is trying to keep documents affirming alleged improprieties related to the Trump International Hotel from the public eye.
On immigration, the Biden administration continued to misuse Title 42, a provision of the Public Health Safety Act first invoked by Trump as the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020. More than one million asylum-seekers have been deported under the policy, the majority of them during Biden's tenure.
The Biden administration also continues to defend the violation of unaccompanied migrant children's legal rights under the Migrant Protection Protocols program, has appealed a court's decision in Gomez et al. v Trump et al. ordering the issuance of more than 9,000 diversity visas, and has caved to Republican pressure and withdrawn from settlement talks with migrants whose families were separated at the border.
Biden's DOJ and Department of Education are defending Trump-era Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' repeal of a rule that helped prevent for-profit colleges exploit students, while shielding DeVos from testifying in a case involving a class-action lawsuit brought by defrauded student borrowers. The Education Department also continues to seek dismissal of a lawsuit by former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra challenging DeVos' Distance Education and Innovation regulations.
On the environmental front, Garland's DOJ is defending Trump-era fossil fuel projects including Enbridge's Line 3 tar sands pipeline despite Biden's pledge to combat the climate emergency.
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The Biden administration is also upholding a doctrine barring military service members who were raped from suing the government, is failing to defend voting rights, and is endorsing an expansion of police power. It is also delaying gender-affirming surgery for a transgender woman prisoner despite a court order and the threat of judicial sanction, defending the Department of Homeland Security's authority to conduct warrantless searches of electronic devices, and upholding a Social Security provision that denies Puerto Rico residents benefits.
"The Biden administration must move quickly to drop, reverse, or settle the cases that Trump left behind," Revolving Door Project asserted. "And--we would have thought this wouldn't need to be said--the administration should adopt Trump's positions about as often as a stopped clock is accurate."
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Koch Network Infiltration of Public Schools 'Harms Students, Teachers, and Our Democracy': Report
"In their assault on public education, the network has taken actions to increasingly privatize and corporatize K-12 institutions."
Aug 11, 2021
A new report published Wednesday reveals how the Koch network--a shadowy group of wealthy capitalists acting to push the U.S. in a more conservative direction--is methodically working to undermine and privatize public education for financial gain.
"The Koch network has financed local, state, and national mechanisms to create multiple crises, only to turn around and cite these same crises as reasons to adopt their free market solutions."
--UnKoch My Campus
The report (pdf), entitled The Koch Network and the Capture of K-12 Education, was compiled by the advocacy groups UnKoch My Campus and Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) and examines tactics employed by the plutocrats' cabal--which is led by billionaire Charles Koch, and whose members pay at least $100,000 per year--"to destabilize and abolish public education."
"In order to influence K-12 public education, the Koch network has financed local, state, and national mechanisms to create multiple crises, only to turn around and cite these same crises as reasons to adopt their free market solutions," according to UnKoch My Campus.
"The Koch network has made no secret about the critical role that public education plays as an ideal arena for influencing U.S. policy and culture," the group says in an introduction to the report. "Through a variety of tactics--charter schools, vouchers, curriculum, textbooks, trainings, using state politicians to engage in culture war against progressive ideas, and more--the Koch network is able to ensure the spread of their ideas, including climate disinformation and free market-favoring economics philosophy."
According to the report, the Koch network's tactics include:
- Supporting the seating of state legislators who intentionally defund public education;
- Destabilizing state funding in schools to promote policies that divert funds away from traditional public schools to charter schools, private schools, and online education under the guise of "school choice";
- Funding higher education centers that create the curriculum and textbooks being used in some K-12 programs; and
- Astroturfing moral panic about ideologies that critique their idea production and theory of change as regressive and racist (Critical Race Theory, or CRT).
"At the moment, there is a coordinated effort in states across the country to pass bills attempting to ban the teaching of CRT in public schools," the report notes. "The Koch-funded Heritage Foundation is leading the push... Both the Heritage Foundation and another Koch-funded organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have held webinars in opposition to the teaching of CRT. ALEC has frequently produced model bills for various right-wing causes, causing concern over their involvement when it comes to anti-CRT state bills."
The report examines Arizona as a case study that "shows exactly what happens when all of these factors fall into place" in a state where "the Koch network's efforts to dismantle public schools have made a significant impact."
Arizona, the report says, "has nearly the lowest per-pupil spending, one of the lowest averages for teacher's pay, and some of the largest class sizes" in the U.S., on average. More than one in six Arizona students are enrolled in charter schools, the Koch-funded Freedom Center "has played a large role in influencing public education in the state," and under a budget signed into law last month by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, schools face fines up to $5,000 and teachers can lose their licenses for "teaching that students' race, ethnicity, or sex determines their character."
"All public institutions are a threat to the Koch network's free market economic agenda," the report states. "In their assault on public education, the network has taken actions to increasingly privatize and corporatize K-12 institutions."
"In doing so, they've created a lot of waste, pushed to close 'failing' schools, favored CEO-like superintendents, aggressively cut costs, and more," the report continues. "Lack of public accountability and transparency surrounding private and charter schools, as well as privately created curriculum and textbooks, leaves little room for parents and educators to take action against undesired and harmful agendas."
"All public institutions are a threat to the Koch network's free market economic agenda."
--Report
The report notes that one Koch network affiliate, former Trump-era Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, "has contributed at least $200 million to conservative organizations, including many within the Koch network, since the 1970s."
The report states that while she was education secretary, DeVos "allocated $399 million in federal grant money toward the expansion of charter schools nationwide," adding that most of her efforts, "such as her attempt to allocate $400 million of the national budget toward charter schools in 2018 or her proposed $5 billion voucher program, were unsuccessful."
"According to a study by Urban Institute, growth in charter school enrollment increases the segregation of Black, Hispanic, and white students," the report adds. "One analysis found that 70% of Black charter school students attended a heavily segregated minority charter school, double the percentage of Black students attending schools in the public sector. The UCLA Civil Rights Project found similarly egregious statistics surrounding charter school treatment of students with disabilities."
Christopher Leonard, author of the book Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, discussed what he said is Koch's education reform policy in a 2019 episode of Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider's "Have You Heard" podcast:
Here's the actual political philosophy: Government is bad. Public education must be destroyed for the good of all American citizens, in this view. So the ultimate goal is to dismantle the public education system entirely and replace it with a privately run education system, which the operatives in this group believe in a sincere way is better for everybody.
Now, whether you agree with that or not is the big question, but we cannot have any doubt, there's going to be a lot of glossy marketing materials about opportunity, innovation, efficiency. At its core, though, the network seeks to dismantle the public education system because they see it as destructive. So that is what's the actual aim of this group. And don't let them tell you anything different.
"The Kochs' infiltration of K-12 education harms students, teachers, and our democracy," the new report asserts. "Students are losing access to quality public school education. Teachers are losing access to resources and the support needed to create a healthy, generative public-school ecosystem."
"Finally," the report concludes, "our democracy is harmed as students are taught with Koch-funded curriculum that promotes regressive and ahistorical ideologies that contribute to myths of meritocracy, normalizes extractive economic practices which disregard our climate, and justify historical structural violence."
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