Feds give states more time to bolster struggling schools

Advocates point to one DeVos relationship that they say gives them hope for how she may approach LGBT issues: Greg McNeilly, a political adviser to DeVos and the chief operating officer of the DeVos family’s company Windquest Group, is gay and was one of the first to marry his same-sex partner in MI after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of the MI school choice activist Betsy DeVos as his education secretary drew praise from many conservatives and criticism from liberal groups and teachers’ unions, who said the selection signaled intentions to privatize education. You see, we know that no human thought or speech or action or desire is completely free of the effects of the fall. “The status quo in ed is not acceptable”, DeVos tweeted.

But our mission is to build more support among Democrats for reform-a critical agenda in light of the outsized power of the teachers’ union within the party-and to cultivate bipartisan support for reform by growing the number of Democrats who support pro-child policies. Trump has himself proposed a $20 billion national school voucher program, and his campaign in August added Rob Goad, a policy adviser to Indiana Representative Luke Messer, to craft school choice policies for the campaign. The NFT later endorsed Clinton. Neither she nor her Amway scion husband Dick DeVos have any background in education, but they run charter schools and now the entire USA education system.

States have to submit their plans for their new accountability systems to the department by either April 3 or September 18 of next year.

After the campaign, I moved to DC and following the lavish Presidential Inaugural of which I served as vice chairman of marketing.

Under President Reagan’s leadership, the iconic study “A Nation At Risk” was released. She also accepted the challenges of the education system in the country. And now, 33 years later, our education system is still failing to compete with other developed nations which are spending far less.

Trump last week announced one of his first cabinet nominees, naming Betsy DeVos, a MI billionaire, as his nominee for secretary of education. She’s married to Dick DeVos, an heir to the Amway fortune, and is the sister to Erik Prince, founder of notorious government-contracted security company Blackwater, now known as Academi.

Her confirmation hearings should offer an interesting opportunity for debate, not only because DeVos’ voucher crusade will make her controversial, but also because she was one of the architects of Detroit’s charter-school experiment – which produced disastrous results.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush also praised Trump’s decision, saying she “is an outstanding pick for Secretary of Education”.

Many other supporters of school choice have come out and expressed support for DeVos-most of whom are Republican. “The long-term strategy of how to change culture is through education”.

The Establishment Clause was ratified to ensure that the state doesn’t pick an official religion – not prohibit religious institutions in the body politic from helping out with such compelling interests as public education or health care. Both Trump’s transition team and DeVos’ office did not immediately return requests for comment.

In Austin, DeVos said it is time to modernize and innovate, to think big and consider how things could be. We must open the education industry, and it IS an industry. Because of this, parents should be able to choose alternatives that best fit the needs of their children.

Proponents say education savings accounts, or ESAs, would allow parents to “customize” their children’s education by subsidizing private school tuition, charter school expenses or paying for home-school “materials”. That’s precisely what Trump has advocated for years.

NAACP-Legal Defense and Educational Fund: The organization highlights DeVos’ support for the effort to allow vouchers in MI, but also her support for overturning affirmative action in higher education in the state. But even if that’s the case, current federal support for the rights of LGBTQ students seem unlikely to last for long in a Trump-Pence White House.