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

[fraurosena]

Betsy DeVos Strikes Again: It’s Party Time at For-Profit Colleges

Quote

This past Tuesday, while everyone was talking about Elijah Cummings and gearing up for the debates, Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education gave the for-profit educational sector some very good news: A few months after reinstating the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), the group that certifies and polices many for-profit educational institutions, it seemed to give the failing accrediting group another pass.

The Obama administration had revoked the ACICS’s ability to accredit, thereby closing it because it somehow missed the signs when three large for-profits went bankrupt, leaving thousands of students burdened with massive debt and no path to complete their degrees. 

This followed on the heels of DeVos’ June 28 repeal of an Obama-era rule called the gainful employment rule. The rule, promulgated in 2014, was designed to rate higher-ed programs based on how much economic security they delivered for graduates, and punish those that charged students too much and delivered too little. Most education reformers liked it, such as those affiliated with the Century Foundation, but for-profit schools hated it: In 2017, the first year that the ratings were released, 98 percent of the programs that didn’t meet the standards were run by for-profits. 

[...]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"DeVos' security detail cost $6.24M during the past year"

Spoiler

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ security detail is projected to cost $7.87 million from now through the end of September 2020, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service told POLITICO today.

The Marshals Service said the final cost of protecting DeVos in fiscal 2019, which ended Monday, was $6.24 million. That’s down from $6.79 million in fiscal 2018 and less than the service’s projection last year — $7.74 million — for fiscal 2019.

The service did not disclose why the secretary's protection is expected to cost more in the upcoming year.

The U.S. Marshals Service, which began providing a protection detail for DeVos in February 2017, “regularly conducts threat assessments on Ms. DeVos to determine threats to the secretary’s safety,” according to an official statement.

DeVos’ security detail is highly unusual — the past four Education secretaries have been protected by the Education Department’s own small security force. Her security detail was initially ordered by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

An agreement between the department and the Marshals Service establishes roles, responsibilities and terms between the agencies “to monitor and mitigate threats against the secretary.”

The Marshals Service said the number of personnel assigned to the detail is “commensurate with the existing threat and based on USMS protective service requirements, experience and methodology.

“For reasons of operational security, we will not disclose the number of employees providing protection or the nature of threats against the secretary,” the statement says.

She's a billionaire, why are we paying so much for her?

[fraurosena]

Oopsie. Buh-bye Betsy!

 

[Audrey2]

That's okay, Trump will just pardon her. Pence will if Trump is removed from office.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

18 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

What a horrible, arrogantly aggravating bi- no, I won't demean myself by using that word. Suffice to say I hate her guts.

[Flossie]

23 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

April 10, 2019

Josh Harder, Representative (D-CA 10th District) and a member of the House Education and Labor Committee, questions Betsy DeVos, United States Secretary of Education.  DeVos was testifying about her department’s policies and priorities before the House Committee on Education and Labor

There were many others questioning DeVos on several topics.  This is just one example of how she avoids explaining what's actually going on.  In this clip, she's talking about how students of Heald College were charged tens of thousands of dollars for an education that proved to be worthless and how she was instructed by the courts to stop collecting debts from those students, her department continued to do so.

In this five minute clip, she's:
*taking offense for Harder's asking her if she's corrupt for not helping students defrauded by predatory schools or if she's incompetent
*twice suggests that Harder would know the answers to his questions if he'd "been here earlier"
*refusing to answer simple yes or no questions, such as admitting she was held in contempt of court for not following the courts orders
*blaming nameless others for mistakes
*claiming she was prevented from doing her job by a court order, and when pressed she said that there was a lack of process "The court said we could simply forgive them all, but that was not the right answer.  The right answer is to do what's right for students, and to do what's right for taxpayers.  And that is my goal, and that is going to continue to be my goal....Where students have been financially harmed, they are going to have relief.  We have a new methodology...We have just implemented it last week.  We are beginning to process them again.  And students will be considered, their claims considered individually, and I am looking forward to addressing all of them.  Nothing disturbs me more than all of the pending claims that have been there and that we have not been able to address appropriately.

DeVos does the same whenever she's questioned on her practices and policies.  Lots of word salad served with a side order of condescension, obfuscation of the facts, blaming others, etc.

DeVos, actions speak louder than words, and your actions do not convince me that you're working for education as it pertains to teaching students in order to learn and better their lives.  Your actions make it clear that you're not only incompetent at your job if you truly are working on behalf of students and taxpayers, but I suspect that you're corrupt as hell.  Some day, and I hope it's soon, I think we'll find that you rich as you are, are somehow making money for yourself and the others of your elite 1%.

What do we expect from a Trump family friend?

Transcripts of the clip are hidden under a spoiler:

Spoiler

 

Josh Harder, Representative (D-CA 10th District) questions Betsy DeVos, United States Secretary of Education.

Harder:  Thank you Mr. Chairman.  Secretary DeVos, I want to start by telling you a story about a constituent of mine, Artemisa.  Back in 2009 she became a student at Heald College in Modesto, just months after it was purchased by Corinthian Colleges.  Artemisa wanted to make a difference in her community, she was pursuing a Medical Assistant degree.  

She chose Heald because she saw on the commercials that it had an 85% job placement rate.  Seemed like a good investment.  

But then she graduated and she couldn't find a job.  And now she owes a whopping $40,000 dollars in student loan debt, for a degree that hasn't helped her get hired.  That may not seem like a lot of money to you Secretary DeVos, but in the real world,  that's devastating.  

Turns out, Artemisa wasn't alone in not being able to find a job.  Corinthian Colleges across the country lied about their job placement rate.  They told her it was an 85% job placement rate for Heald.  Turns out, the actual placement rate for Heald was 0.  Not 85%, but 0.  That's a big difference.  Artemisa and tens of thousands of students were defrauded by Corinthian.  We all know this.  We all agree.  

In 2014 the Department of Education fined them $30 million dollars for this fraud.  Everyone agreed, but here five years later Artemisa still has that $40,000 thousand dollars in student loan debt, she still hasn't found a job in her field, and she hasn't gotten any help, whatsoever.

The reason for that is because you have put roadblock after roadblock in front of helping these students.  Your job is to fight for them, but instead your actions suggest you would prefer to be the chief lobbyist for the predatory schools that defrauded them.  

After being ordered by a federal court to stop collecting debts from cheated Corinthian students, you ignored the order and kept stealing money from these students.  You were even held in contempt of court because of it.  You're not standing up for them, you're working for the schools that defrauded them.

Maybe you've forgotten to refund these students.  Maybe Artemis's $40,000 dollars in student loan debt just doesn't sound like a lot to you because it's only 1/10th of 1% of one of your family's ten yachts.

Artemisa and tens of thousands of others have been waiting years for your help.  You have deliberately violated a federal court order, and I'm confused why.

So I guess I just have one question for you, Secretary DeVos.  Are you deliberatly violating this federal court order because you are too corrupt to uphold the law, or because you're too incompetent to do your job?

Offscreen voice:  The gentleman will address the facts and figures and not question the character of the witness.

Harder:  Secretary DeVos, why have you been held in contempt of court?

DeVos:  Well Congressman, let me begin by saying I took great personal offense to everything you've just said.  I come to my job every day on behalf of students.  I don't need to sit and listen to what you just spewed out of your mouth.  I - 

Harder:  I don't understand how you could d-

DeVos:  I did not defy any court order.  I instructed Federal Student Aid to follow the court order.  If you had been here earlier you would have known that mistakes were made on the part of Federal Student Aid employees and on the part of loan servicers, that when they were discovered were immediately acknowledged and corrected.

Harder:  Secretary DeVos - 

DeVos:  They have been remediated -

Harder:  Give me my time, please. -

DeVos:  They have been remediated - 

Harder:  I understand that you have been held - that you are taking offense.  

The reality is that there are tens of thousands of students whose financial futures have been ruined by three years of inaction.  And you're just making excuses.  You're blaming this problem on somebody else.  You're the Secretary of Education for three years, and you're trying to defy the facts of this matter.  

Yes or no, were you held in contempt of court and fined?

DeVos:  Congressman, I have not been able to address all of the Corinthian College claims because a court order stopped us in May of 2018.

Harder:  That's simply not true.  

DeVos:  That is true.

Harder:  Now the courts said there is nothing stopping the Department from processing these borrower defense claims.

DeVos:  There was something stopping - there was a lack of process.  The court said we could simply forgive them all, but that was not the right answer.  The right answer is to do what's right for students, and to do what's right for taxpayers.  And that is my goal, and that is going to continue to be my goal.

Harder:  Secretary DeVos, what's right for students is helping the tens of thousands of students who have been defrauded.  Students like Artemisa.  And blaming this problem on somebody else, taking three years to make absolutely no progress?  It's not helping these students.  It's only helping the scam colleges that defrauded them.

Thank you Mr. Chairman.

DeVos:  Where students have been financially harmed, they are going to have relief.  We have a new methodology, which once again, if you had been here earlier you would have known.  We have just implemented it last week.  We are beginning to process them again.  And students will be considered, their claims considered individually, and I am looking forward to addressing all of them.  Nothing disturbs me more than all of the pending claims that have been there and that we have not been able to address appropriately.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[quiversR4hunting]

Anyone see this delightful song about Betsy?

 

[WiseGirl]

Good

 

[fraurosena]

Betsy Devos is an asinine twatwaddle that can only spout the party rhetoric (i.e. accuse the other of what you yourself are doing).

 

[Ali]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Betsy Devos is an asinine twatwaddle that can only spout the party rhetoric (i.e. accuse the other of what you yourself are doing).

 

I loathe this woman so much. I want to see her sub in a Kindergarten classroom under these conditions. I bet she would not even last an hour. They would eat her alive.

[AmazonGrace]

 

They do look a bit alike.

 

 

[smittykins]

CNN is reporting that DeVos has submitted her resignation.

[AnywhereButHere]

 

Who’s next!

Edited January 8, 2021 by AnywhereButHere

[church_of_dog]

9 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

 

Who’s next!

Is that cartoon from the Bush administration?  Hey, if the shoe fits...

[onekidanddone]

If Delores Umbrage and Cruella de Vil spawned a child it would be Betsy DeVos

[quiversR4hunting]

13 hours ago, smittykins said:

CNN is reporting that DeVos has submitted her resignation.

This pisses me off. Her and Elaine Chao resigned because of their disgust of Trump and the coup attempt this week instead of staying and fighting and voting to enact the 25th amendment. ?? all of them!!

Don't get me wrong, I despise Betsy and hate what she has done for against education these last 4 years but she was in the position to do something about the horrible, awful man in the white house and she took the easy way out. ??

[GreyhoundFan]

[Xan]

Generally, we've thought that DeVos resigned because she didn't want to be involved in using the 25th Amendment.  Maybe the stronger reason was concern about her brother, Erik Prince, and what his Blackwater brethren might have been up to at the Capitol.  Those zip tie guys were very well kitted out.  Word is that, when they came through the door, they went directly to specific rooms.  Who were they hoping to kidnap and/or assassinate?  And how official were they?

Betsy might have been hoping to look anti-Trump in case they start coming after her brother.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is the truth:

[AmazonGrace]

She wants to spend more time with her stolen Dalmatians.

[smittykins]

I actually almost wrote “Cruella DeVos” but decided against it. ?