If you support Public Education - please vote no on Betsy Devos

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Not unlike public education

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Howl]

On 7/26/2018 at 9:38 AM, AmazonGrace said:

Not unlike public education

Speaking of Betsy's yacht: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Let's not educate people, let's give them guns instead.

Betsy DeVos Is Said to Weigh Letting School Districts Use Federal Funds to Buy Guns

Quote

The Education Department is considering whether to allow states to use federal funding to purchase guns for educators, according to multiple people with knowledge of the plan.

Such a move appears to be unprecedented, reversing a longstanding position taken by the federal government that it should not pay to outfit schools with weapons. And it would also undermine efforts by Congress to restrict the use of federal funding on guns. As recently as March, Congress passed a school safety bill that allocated $50 million a year to local school districts, but expressly prohibited the use of the money for firearms.

But the department is eyeing a program in federal education law, the Student Support and Academic Enrichment grants, that makes no mention of prohibiting weapons purchases. That omission would allow the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to use her discretion to approve any state or district plans to use grant funding for firearms and firearm training, unless Congress clarifies the law or bans such funding through legislative action.

“The department is constantly considering and evaluating policy issues, particularly issues related to school safety,” said Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. “The secretary nor the department issues opinions on hypothetical scenarios.”

The $1 billion student support program, part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, is intended for academic and enrichment opportunities in the country’s poorest schools and calls for school districts to use the money toward three goals: providing a well-rounded education, improving school conditions for learning and improving the use of technology for digital literacy.

Department officials acknowledged that should the Education Department carry out the proposal, it would appear to be the first time that a federal agency has authorized the purchase of weapons without a congressional mandate, according to people familiar with the discussions. And while no such restrictions exist in the federal education law, it could undermine the grant program’s adoption of “drug and violence prevention,” which defines a safe school environment as free of weapons.

In its research, the Education Department has determined that the gun purchases could fall under improving school conditions, people familiar with the department’s thinking said. Under the current guidelines for that part of the grant, the department encourages schools to increase access to mental health counseling, establish dropout prevention programs, reduce suspensions and expulsions and improve re-entry programs for students transitioning from the juvenile justice system.

But the department began exploring whether to expand the use of the support grants after the school shootings in Parkland, Fla., and Santa Fe, Tex., prompted states to inquire about alternatives. Department officials were considering whether to issue guidance on the funding before the start of the new school year, but have been weighing the political and legal ramifications, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The measure would also break from decades-old practice in how funding is doled out for the purposes of school security.

Guidance for grants distributed by the Homeland Security Department that are intended for “school preparedness,” for example, notes that weapons and ammunition are not permitted. And after the Parkland shooting, Congress added a rule prohibiting the use of grants for firearms or firearm training in the Stop School Violence Act, under which the Justice Department will grant funds to school districts.

In weighing the proposal, the Education Department has also taken into account that school shootings were not a consideration when Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, according to people familiar with the discussions. Three of the remaining architects of the law — Representative Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, and Senators Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington State — have all opposed the idea of arming teachers.

The student support grant was created from funds from other programs that were collapsed in the Every Student Succeeds Act that addressed issues like mental health, violence prevention, bullying and harassment.

The Trump administration has twice moved to eliminate the grant program from its budget. But as Congress drafted a spending bill in the months after the Parkland shooting, advocates pointed to the program as emblematic of a successful approach to school safety. Congress instead increased funding for the grants by $700 million in the bill passed this year.

After the Parkland shooting, the Trump administration convened a federal commission on school safety, led by Ms. DeVos, to examine topics like mental and behavioral health resources, building security and the role of law enforcement in schools.

The commission has held several public hearings where educators and advocates from across the country have asked for expanded support staff and services, including school counselors, and additional security measures. Members of the commission have also visited school districts, like in rural Arkansas, where armed employees can be found at schools in areas not easily reached by law enforcement. The commission plans to issue recommendations by the end of the year.

In June, Ms. DeVos said the commission would not consider the role of guns in school shootings, but she later indicated that the panel would look narrowly at specific issues, including age limits for firearm purchases.

Last month, Ms. DeVos’s assistant secretary for the office of elementary and secondary education, Jason Botel, reiterated that point in a congressional hearing.

That prompted Representative Donald M. Payne Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, to question the Education Department. In a letter to Mr. Botel, he asked if the department was planning to arm teachers.

But the department issued a statement saying that it did not plan to do so because “this is a function appropriately reserved for the states.”

The proposal by the Education Department is almost certain to spur backlash. The Trump administration’s call to arm educators in an effort to prevent school shootings has faced overwhelming criticism from educators, lawmakers and law enforcement officials.

"[...] the Education Department has determined that the gun purchases could fall under improving school conditions [...]"

Improving school conditions? Improving? By giving guns instead of education? Sounds completely logical. 

[WiseGirl]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/22/us/politics/betsy-devos-guns.html

Whoops! I posted and went on my tirade in a different thread because I didn't see this thread. 

Succinct version - give schools supplies, clean water, improved buildings you.....*stomps off to swear jar....

[AmazonGrace]

Evil is as evil does 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Make rape great again 

 

[fraurosena]

DeVos sued for allegedly failing to comply with judge’s order to cancel student debt

Quote

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was sued Tuesday for allegedly failing to cancel student debt for people whose for-profit colleges have shut down.

Last month a court ruled that the Obama-era debt regulations had to be implemented after over a year of delays by DeVos.

DeVos released a statement in October saying that the department would no longer be seeking to delay the rule.

However, Housing and Economic Rights Advocates (HERA), a California legal service group, has filed a lawsuit alleging that the Education Department is still collecting loans that it should have discharged.

The president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, a group helping represent HERA, said in a statement released Tuesday that delays are hurting thousands of students.

“Under current leadership, the Department of Education seems determined to deny student borrowers the financial relief to which they are entitled,” said Aaron Ament.

“It has been nearly two years since these rules should have taken effect, and Secretary DeVos is still dragging her feet and hurting tens of thousands of borrowers through her inaction. The students we are trying to help have been doubly victimized – first by the for-profit colleges that deceived them, and now by the federal government that refuses to help.”

The so-called borrower defense rule would require schools to put up a large sum of money each time a lawsuit is filed against it to protect taxpayers, should the institution fail.

A representative from the Department of Education did not immediately respond to The Hill's request for comment.

 

[fraurosena]

This stupid disgusting ass-wipe of a woman makes me so angry, and nauseous to the pit of my stomach. 

 

[mamallama]

OMG that makes me so ragey.  

[Howl]

Aside from how utterly vile and despicable this is, why are college campuses apart from regular laws and regular police oversight?  I'm assuming it's because, if they are large enough, they have their own police force.  The Large State University where I worked has around 45,000 total enrollment and thousands more support staff, admin and faculty, but of that number, only a minuscule fraction actually lives on campus -- maybe 200 - 300 students max in extremely limited dorm space. 

And Betsy De Vos?  Here's a hearty Fuck You! 

[AnywhereButHere]

There's been this lovely incident that's come to light, because of course nothing says Junior Prom in a lily white district in middle America like a good old Nazi salute...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/school-weighs-next-steps-after-the-baraboo-boys-photo-goes-viral/ar-BBPLTG5?ocid=ientp

Quote

Lhamon says the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights could offer technical assistance to the school and district to navigate appropriate steps. The office could also open a directed investigation or a compliance review to proactively investigate the situation.

The Office for Civil Rights is required by law to address formal complaints and requests for investigations. Proactive investigations are typically reserved for particularly egregious cases or to address an issue that's found to be widespread.

As of now, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has not addressed the photo of the Baraboo high schoolers, nor has she tasked the Office for Civil Rights with investigating. A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment on whether Devos would pursue any type of investigation in the future.

I'm going to go with  - a bear attack being more likely than her pursuing anything.

[WiseGirl]

https://twitter.com/tonyposnanski/status/1063531361884127232?s=19

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by WiseGirl
Whoops on the link.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

I'm a cyclist, so I want to know the details of how this accident happened.  Road bike or mountain bike accident?   Hit by a car or a fall? 

Also, couldn't happen to a nicer person. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"High school journalists were barred from a Betsy DeVos event. So they took her to task in an editorial."

Spoiler

The students were on deadline, and they were on a mission.

They piled into a car last Wednesday and pulled away from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, their public school in Lexington, Ky. With permission, they drove across town to a community college where their Republican governor, Matt Bevin, was hosting a roundtable discussion on education featuring Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

The high schoolers — writers and editors for their school paper, the PLD Lamplighter — believed they were following the advice offered by DeVos last fall when she counseled, “It is easy to be nasty hiding behind screens and Twitter handles. It’s not so easy face to face.”

So the student journalists turned away from their screens and social media apps. They went in pursuit, they would later say, of “that face-to-face opportunity."

They would never get it. They were shut out of the roundtable, advertised as an “open press event,” because they had not sent in an RSVP to an invitation they had never received and didn’t realize was required.

They were confused and dejected. But they still had to come up with copy — and fast.

Unable to document the event, or query DeVos in person, they set about investigating the circumstances of her private appearance at the public community college. Ultimately, they penned an editorial flaying the education secretary and the Kentucky governor, accusing them of paying lip service to the needs of students while excluding them from the conversation.

“How odd is it that even though future generations of students’ experiences could be based on what was discussed, that we, actual students, were turned away?” they asked in their piece, titled “No Seat at the Roundtable” and published on their website the following day.

“We expected the event to be intense,” the young journalists wrote. “We expected there to be a lot of information to cover. But not being able to exercise our rights under the First Amendment was something we never thought would happen. We weren’t prepared for that.”

As their travails became the story, the students began to see the terms of the event as emblematic of the approach of the education secretary, who has been criticized as displaying only cursory understanding of the subjects in her remit.

They wondered why there had been so little advance notice of the discussion, which focused on school “freedom” scholarships that would allow public funds to be used to send children to private and religious schools, even those that discriminate against LGBT students. DeVos, whose prior expertise in education policy was limited to steering her personal wealth to the cause of school choice, is seeking $5 billion for the program.

The journalists asked why the event was held at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, when most students and educators are busy.

“We wonder if the topic of school choice at the roundtable in Lexington is what kept public school students from being able to attend,” they speculated. “Don’t they want student input?”

The Lexington Herald-Leader picked up the students’ story on Friday and obtained a statement from a spokeswoman for DeVos. The local outlet sent the response along to the high schoolers, who added it to their account. It read: “No one from the Secretary’s staff was made aware that student journalists were attempting to attend the roundtable. We welcome student journalists and would have been happy for them to be in attendance. We are looking into what, if any, miscommunication might have happened between other staff on site for the event.”

Aides to the governor, who has been an eager partner of DeVos in her effort to expand school choice, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The students added the clarification from the Department of Education in one of five updates appended to their editorial, as they continued to cover the fallout from the event. In the process, they learned that their dismay tapped into a broader story line.

“It was heartbreaking to us, as young journalists fired up to cover an event regarding the future of education, to leave empty-handed,” they wrote. “But as we researched we learned that we were not the only ones who were disappointed and frustrated.”

The members of the editorial board at the PLD Lamplighter, an award-winning student newspaper, learned of the event from local news reports on April 16, the day before it was scheduled to take place. They swiftly made plans to attend, seeing an opportunity “to demonstrate our professionalism.”

When they arrived at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, however, they encountered a man with the college’s badge on his blazer. One of the paper’s editors-in-chief, Abigail Wheatley, told him, “We’re here for Matt Bevin and Betsy DeVos’s roundtable discussion.”

“Well, okay,” he replied, according to the students. “Who are you with?”

They showed him their school identification and their press credentials, but he wasn’t satisfied. He asked to see their invitation.

“Invitation?” they recalled thinking. “For a roundtable discussion on education?”

The man waved them away.

“It was then that our story turned from news coverage to editorial,” they recounted.

Intent on coming up with something, they scoured social media for details about the discussion. They saw it mentioned on a government website that credentialed journalists were required to RSVP, but they wondered why this detail hadn’t been more widely broadcast. “Doesn’t open press imply open to ALL press including students?” they wondered.

They also found it curious that the event featured no public school teachers, parents or students. Not a single one of the 173 school districts in the state was represented, as the students noted. Instead, as local journalists who had properly RSVP’d observed, it was a platform for school-choice advocates to air their views to a sympathetic audience, including members of the Kentucky Board of Education, representatives of the business community and delegates from interest groups such as the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity.

“It is remarkable to me that this is even remotely debatable,” Bevin said of the contest over school choice, which pits those who want more alternatives to traditional public schools against those who argue that transferring funds from the public system is a means of privatizing one of the country’s foundational civic institutions.

Kentucky has been a noted battleground in the struggle over public education. Last year, schools across the state were shuttered as teachers protested a budget plan that threatened to undermine their pensions. The showdown, which ended when lawmakers voted to override Bevin’s veto of a spending package that expanded education funding, was part of a wave of teacher strikes from West Virginia to Colorado to Arizona.

DeVos appeared to allude to these conflicts when she acknowledged “frustrations” in Kentucky, urging Bevin to persist. The Kentucky Education Association, the statewide teachers union, seized on those comments, promising that it had only begun to “frustrate your agenda.”

The students asked the superintendent of their school system, Fayette County’s Manny Caulk, if he had been invited. He said he had not. Meanwhile, Tyler Murphy, a member of the county’s board of education, lampooned the visit on Twitter.

After the discussion, Bevin told reporters, “The people here care about the kids. Every single person who sat around this table cares about the children — not about funding, not about territory, not about power, not about politics. They care about parents and they care about students."

The student journalists labeled his statement “interesting.”

Still, they sounded an optimistic note. Though they were unable to gain the experience they had set out to acquire, they had learned a lesson nonetheless.

“We learned that the job of a journalist is to chase the story by any means necessary,” they wrote. “We learned to be resourceful and meet our deadline even if it wasn’t in the way we initially intended. And we learned that although students aren’t always taken seriously, we have to continue to keep trying to have a seat at the table.”

 

[quiversR4hunting]

23 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"High school journalists were barred from a Betsy DeVos event. So they took her to task in an editorial."

  Reveal hidden contents

The students were on deadline, and they were on a mission.

They piled into a car last Wednesday and pulled away from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, their public school in Lexington, Ky. With permission, they drove across town to a community college where their Republican governor, Matt Bevin, was hosting a roundtable discussion on education featuring Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

The high schoolers — writers and editors for their school paper, the PLD Lamplighter — believed they were following the advice offered by DeVos last fall when she counseled, “It is easy to be nasty hiding behind screens and Twitter handles. It’s not so easy face to face.”

So the student journalists turned away from their screens and social media apps. They went in pursuit, they would later say, of “that face-to-face opportunity."

They would never get it. They were shut out of the roundtable, advertised as an “open press event,” because they had not sent in an RSVP to an invitation they had never received and didn’t realize was required.

They were confused and dejected. But they still had to come up with copy — and fast.

Unable to document the event, or query DeVos in person, they set about investigating the circumstances of her private appearance at the public community college. Ultimately, they penned an editorial flaying the education secretary and the Kentucky governor, accusing them of paying lip service to the needs of students while excluding them from the conversation.

“How odd is it that even though future generations of students’ experiences could be based on what was discussed, that we, actual students, were turned away?” they asked in their piece, titled “No Seat at the Roundtable” and published on their website the following day.

“We expected the event to be intense,” the young journalists wrote. “We expected there to be a lot of information to cover. But not being able to exercise our rights under the First Amendment was something we never thought would happen. We weren’t prepared for that.”

As their travails became the story, the students began to see the terms of the event as emblematic of the approach of the education secretary, who has been criticized as displaying only cursory understanding of the subjects in her remit.

They wondered why there had been so little advance notice of the discussion, which focused on school “freedom” scholarships that would allow public funds to be used to send children to private and religious schools, even those that discriminate against LGBT students. DeVos, whose prior expertise in education policy was limited to steering her personal wealth to the cause of school choice, is seeking $5 billion for the program.

The journalists asked why the event was held at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday, when most students and educators are busy.

“We wonder if the topic of school choice at the roundtable in Lexington is what kept public school students from being able to attend,” they speculated. “Don’t they want student input?”

The Lexington Herald-Leader picked up the students’ story on Friday and obtained a statement from a spokeswoman for DeVos. The local outlet sent the response along to the high schoolers, who added it to their account. It read: “No one from the Secretary’s staff was made aware that student journalists were attempting to attend the roundtable. We welcome student journalists and would have been happy for them to be in attendance. We are looking into what, if any, miscommunication might have happened between other staff on site for the event.”

Aides to the governor, who has been an eager partner of DeVos in her effort to expand school choice, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The students added the clarification from the Department of Education in one of five updates appended to their editorial, as they continued to cover the fallout from the event. In the process, they learned that their dismay tapped into a broader story line.

“It was heartbreaking to us, as young journalists fired up to cover an event regarding the future of education, to leave empty-handed,” they wrote. “But as we researched we learned that we were not the only ones who were disappointed and frustrated.”

The members of the editorial board at the PLD Lamplighter, an award-winning student newspaper, learned of the event from local news reports on April 16, the day before it was scheduled to take place. They swiftly made plans to attend, seeing an opportunity “to demonstrate our professionalism.”

When they arrived at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, however, they encountered a man with the college’s badge on his blazer. One of the paper’s editors-in-chief, Abigail Wheatley, told him, “We’re here for Matt Bevin and Betsy DeVos’s roundtable discussion.”

“Well, okay,” he replied, according to the students. “Who are you with?”

They showed him their school identification and their press credentials, but he wasn’t satisfied. He asked to see their invitation.

“Invitation?” they recalled thinking. “For a roundtable discussion on education?”

The man waved them away.

“It was then that our story turned from news coverage to editorial,” they recounted.

Intent on coming up with something, they scoured social media for details about the discussion. They saw it mentioned on a government website that credentialed journalists were required to RSVP, but they wondered why this detail hadn’t been more widely broadcast. “Doesn’t open press imply open to ALL press including students?” they wondered.

They also found it curious that the event featured no public school teachers, parents or students. Not a single one of the 173 school districts in the state was represented, as the students noted. Instead, as local journalists who had properly RSVP’d observed, it was a platform for school-choice advocates to air their views to a sympathetic audience, including members of the Kentucky Board of Education, representatives of the business community and delegates from interest groups such as the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity.

“It is remarkable to me that this is even remotely debatable,” Bevin said of the contest over school choice, which pits those who want more alternatives to traditional public schools against those who argue that transferring funds from the public system is a means of privatizing one of the country’s foundational civic institutions.

Kentucky has been a noted battleground in the struggle over public education. Last year, schools across the state were shuttered as teachers protested a budget plan that threatened to undermine their pensions. The showdown, which ended when lawmakers voted to override Bevin’s veto of a spending package that expanded education funding, was part of a wave of teacher strikes from West Virginia to Colorado to Arizona.

DeVos appeared to allude to these conflicts when she acknowledged “frustrations” in Kentucky, urging Bevin to persist. The Kentucky Education Association, the statewide teachers union, seized on those comments, promising that it had only begun to “frustrate your agenda.”

The students asked the superintendent of their school system, Fayette County’s Manny Caulk, if he had been invited. He said he had not. Meanwhile, Tyler Murphy, a member of the county’s board of education, lampooned the visit on Twitter.

After the discussion, Bevin told reporters, “The people here care about the kids. Every single person who sat around this table cares about the children — not about funding, not about territory, not about power, not about politics. They care about parents and they care about students."

The student journalists labeled his statement “interesting.”

Still, they sounded an optimistic note. Though they were unable to gain the experience they had set out to acquire, they had learned a lesson nonetheless.

“We learned that the job of a journalist is to chase the story by any means necessary,” they wrote. “We learned to be resourceful and meet our deadline even if it wasn’t in the way we initially intended. And we learned that although students aren’t always taken seriously, we have to continue to keep trying to have a seat at the table.”

 

Thank you for posting this article! The students did great! 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Betsy DeVos emerges a Trump Cabinet survivor"

Spoiler

In a presidential Cabinet that resembles a season of “Survivor” more than “The West Wing,” an unlikely contestant is still standing after more than two years.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos remains so disliked in certain circles that her very name is a punchline. She mostly lands in the news for the wrong reasons, such as being forced last month to defend budget cuts for the Special Olympics before angry lawmakers. President Trump has privately complained about her, insulting her intelligence on several occasions, according to a former senior administration official who worked closely with Trump and another senior official who is still at the White House.

Yet the president shows no signs of asking her to resign, reflecting in part his lack of interest in the issue of education and the department responsible for it. And DeVos has no interest in departing. Advisers say she is excited by the tasks ahead. After two years of mostly undoing the work of her predecessors, she has shifted to advancing her own agenda.

Topping her list is a proposal for a $5-billion-a-year tax credit that would reimburse taxpayers and corporations dollar for dollar for donations to scholarship programs. DeVos, 61, came to Washington after a lifetime of advocating for school vouchers and other programs that allow families to channel tax dollars away from traditional public schools. Passage of such a plan would represent a crowning achievement — though it is unlikely, given widespread Democratic opposition.

DeVos persuaded the Treasury Department to support the idea, even though the credit would complicate the tax code just two years after a bill passed to simplify it. She worked behind the scenes to negotiate details and unite most school choice proponents behind the plan. Now, she is traveling the country to promote the idea, with trips so far to three states and more planned.

At the White House, aides do not expect the measure to become law, and Trump hardly mentions it. But White House officials say DeVos gets credit for pushing the school choice agenda, which is popular with Trump’s core of conservative supporters.

And DeVos, who is deeply religious, scores points for the president with evangelical Christians, an important part of his base that has stuck by Trump even as unseemly details of his personal life have spilled out.

“He has staffed his administration and surrounded himself with people who have deep roots and street cred in the faith community. Betsy would be at or near the top of that list,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a longtime evangelical leader.

DeVos does not shy from talking about her faith. At an event in January hosted by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, she spoke of her Christian education and said her faith helps her deal with public criticism.

“There’s an audience I play to, and it’s just an audience of one,” she said. “That’s a true north star.”

This account of DeVos’s endurance in the Education Department’s top job is based on interviews with eight people with direct knowledge of the secretary’s relationship with the president and with an understanding of the inner workings of the White House and education agency. Many of those people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the relationships involved.

So far, officials occupying 15 Cabinet-level positions have been fired or resigned since Trump took office. Leaders at State, Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior and Health and Human Services have been fired, resigned under pressure or quit in protest. Trump has also overseen enormous turnover among top White House staffers.

DeVos has benefited from Trump’s lack of interest in education, officials say. And the president — despite his “Apprentice” reputation for dispatching with poor-performing employees — is actually loath to fire subordinates. In many cases, he’s let them dangle for months before cutting the rope or makes their lives so miserable they quit.

DeVos aides say she has a good relationship with Trump. One adviser said the president calls DeVos maybe once a month to talk. He dismissed reports of the president speaking negatively about DeVos, saying he makes derisive remarks about all sorts of people.

Also bolstering DeVos’s standing: She hasn’t had a single personal scandal. She’s a billionaire and travels by private plane, but she pays for it herself. She donates her salary to charity. Even detractors say that in person, DeVos is pleasant and easy to be around. And she has shown personal grit, appearing in public in a wheelchair after she broke her pelvis in a cycling accident.

In contrast, White House officials describe Trump as more hot and cold regarding DeVos and said he rarely sees her. He has been frustrated with her public mistakes, beginning with her disastrous confirmation hearing, they said, and expects perfection from his lieutenants.

But Trump appreciates that she’s tough, handles criticism and is a loyal soldier willing to defend even unpopular policies, officials said. For instance, she spent three days last month defending the administration’s plan to eliminate nearly $18 million in federal funding for a Special Olympics program in schools. She had fought to maintain the spending and was overruled by the White House budget office but still argued for the cut before hostile lawmakers at two congressional hearings.

Then, after the three-day mini-drama, Trump swooped in and announced he was overruling “my people” and favored the funding. It prompted a rare, albeit gentle, DeVos pushback.

“I am pleased and grateful the president and I see eye-to-eye on this issue, and that he has decided to fund our Special Olympics grant,” she said. “This is funding I have fought for behind the scenes over the last several years.”

Before that, she had kept quiet about the internal dispute. Early in the administration, she attended a dinner for the Special Olympics, dining with athletes and then speaking about her support for the program. Two weeks later, Timothy Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, was shocked to see the president’s first budget plan, which proposed cutting all federal support for the group.

He called DeVos to ask about it. At first, she defended the cut but then backed down, implying it was never her idea. Six months later, she donated a quarter of her salary to the nonprofit. Congress ignored the president’s request and increased the funding.

DeVos kept quiet on other disagreements with the White House, too. She was against revoking documents meant to help schools work with transgender students but never publicly protested. She didn’t think that a school safety commission, formed after the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., should consider the question of racial disparities in student discipline. Again, she said nothing.

Aides describe her as a loyal soldier, an approach that has helped keep her position with Trump secure. But DeVos has done little to win over critics who opposed her from the start. Detractors say she lacks basic knowledge about education, caring only about her pet issue of school choice. They charge that she wants to destroy, not bolster, public education. And they argue that someone who has never attended a public school has no business being education secretary.

“She is undeterred in her mission despite the forces against her,” department spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill said. “People see she is in it for the right reasons.”

Aides said DeVos has met with Democrats who might support her tax credit plan but declined to name them. She has never reached out to Charlie Barone, lobbyist for Democrats for Education Reform, a group that favors some of the same policies — such as more charter schools — and who might have been at least an occasional ally.

Barone noted that Democrats have supported similar tax credits at the state level but predicted most in Congress would reject a federal plan because it is not coupled with support for public schools.

“They’re crazy if they think they have a chance with Democrats on this,” he said.

Outside Washington, DeVos still confronts protesters at public events. Inside the events, she rarely engages in discussion of topics that are not part of the program.

Last fall, she toured Holmes County Central High School in Lexington, Miss., in the Mississippi Delta, a poverty-stricken region. She was there to observe a distance-learning advanced-placement physics class, aided in part by Ivy League students tutoring over Skype. The secretary gamely participated in an experiment involving flicking a piece of paper from under a penny balancing on her finger.

“Oh, I did it!” she exclaimed, high-fiving a student.

During a roundtable discussion, one person raised an issue affecting the school system — “very severe” teacher shortages. Dozens of classes were being taught by uncertified long-term substitutes because the system cannot recruit enough teachers. DeVos did not respond to that point.

When asked about the teacher shortage by local reporters, the secretary replied that teachers need more autonomy and more opportunities for advancement, and she said schools should think “outside the box.” She did not offer ideas for attracting more teachers to the rural district.

“If you’re focused on doing the right thing for students,” she said, “solutions are going to follow.”

Asked later about her response, Nathan Bailey, her chief of staff, said it’s not her role to offer specifics.

“The job of the secretary of education is not to ‘solve’ every problem in education,” he said in an email. “She often doesn’t opine from on high on how to solve local problems. She thinks everyone should come together in the community to solve problems.”

So, the secretary of education isn't supposed to solve problems in education? Good grief.

[GreyhoundFan]

Boo hoo, Betsy doesn't like her job. Maybe she should quit. "Betsy DeVos accuses media of using her as ‘clickbait’"

Spoiler

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Monday accused many in the media of using her name as "clickbait,” telling an audience of journalists that “education is not about Betsy DeVos nor any other individual."

DeVos, speaking at the National Education Writers Association conference in Baltimore, acknowledged she’s not comfortable in the spotlight and never imagined she’d be the focus of media coverage.

“I don’t enjoy the publicity that comes with my position. I don’t love being up on stage or on any kind of platform. I’m an introvert,” DeVos said.

She added: "As much as many in the media use my name as clickbait or try to make it all about me, it’s not."

DeVos has often had a contentious relationship with the press and has provided less access to reporters than her predecessors.

DeVos encouraged the reporters in attendance to rethink the definition of public education and encouraged them to “get the terminology right about schools and school choice.” She said a phrase like “vouchers for charter schools” is nonsensical.

“Charter schools are public schools,” DeVos said. “Vouchers are not tax-credits nor are they tax-deductions nor education savings accounts nor 529 accounts. There are many different mechanisms that empower families to choose the education that’s right for their children. And they are just that, mechanisms.”

DeVos described how she became an education advocate for school choice policies because she wanted to bring about fairness and promote policies that empower families.

“I realized more and more the unfairness of the situation and the unfairness that we have grown accustomed to,” DeVos said.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Quote

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Monday accused many in the media of using her name as "clickbait,” telling an audience of journalists that “education is not about Betsy DeVos nor any other individual."

She's right. Education has nothing to do with Betsy DeVos.

[GreyhoundFan]

But her emails... "Feds: DeVos used personal emails for work in ‘limited’ cases"

Spoiler

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has sometimes used her personal email accounts for government business and has not always properly saved the messages, according to an internal investigation released Monday.

The agency’s Office of Inspector General, which was investigating at the request of House Democrats, said it searched the department’s email system and found a “limited” number of messages to or from DeVos’ personal accounts. In total, it said there were “fewer than 100” emails linked to four personal accounts.

Most of the emails were from the first six months of 2017, soon after DeVos took office, and most were from a single person, the inquiry found. The person, who was not identified in the report, was writing to recommend candidates for agency jobs. Other emails were from people who congratulated DeVos on her confirmation or offered other job advice.

In total, investigators said they identified six emails sent by DeVos on private accounts, including five that involved official agency business. The inquiry concluded that there was no evidence of “active or extensive” use of DeVos’ personal accounts.

The secretary’s office told investigators it was taking “additional steps to identify and preserve” emails in her personal accounts. A department spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.

Under department rules, employees are forbidden from using personal emails for government business except in rare circumstances when their work accounts are unavailable. In those cases, employees are required to forward the messages to their work accounts within 20 days. But in DeVos’ case, the report said, that never happened.

“We did not identify any instances where the secretary forwarded emails from her personal accounts to her department email accounts,” the report said. It added that “the secretary’s emails related to government business were not always being properly preserved.”

The inspector general’s office urged the department to improve its training on the issue. It said there was no other evidence of irregularities around the use of personal emails.

During his 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked Democratic rival Hillary Clinton over findings that she used a private email server for work while she was secretary of state. At rallies, Trump often called for her prosecution and led supporters in chants of “lock her up!”

The Education Department review was requested in October 2017 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. The inspector general’s office said it was unable to begin work until “well into 2018” because of staffing challenges.