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Education-Designate Betsy DeVos Nomination Thread
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Topic Started: Jan 17 2017, 02:31 AM (32 Views)
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Webster
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Jan 17 2017, 02:31 AM
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MSN News: DeVos To Face Scrunity Over Schools, Conservative Activism

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WASHINGTON — Charter school advocate Betsy DeVos is widely expected to push for expanding school choice programs if confirmed as education secretary, prompting pushback from teachers unions. But Democrats and activists also are raising concerns about how her conservative Christian beliefs and advocacy for family values might impact minority and LGBT students.
The wealthy Republican donor's financial and political clout will be on display on Tuesday as she goes before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has members who have benefited from her largesse. Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said in a statement that DeVos "will work tirelessly to ensure every child has access to a high quality education."
Critics say the choice of DeVos belies President-elect Donald Trump's promises to "drain the swamp" and bring new faces to politics and policy in Washington.
"He is basically proposing a bunch of people to be in the Cabinet that are political insiders with lots of money and have used that money to buy politicians and DeVos definitely fits that description," said Carmel Martin, executive vice president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank.
DeVos has long taken pride in her political and financial activity.
"I have decided . to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence," DeVos wrote in a 1997 column in Roll Call. "Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return." She said wants to foster a conservative governing philosophy and respect for traditional values.
DeVos, a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman, heads the American Federation for Children, an advocacy group that promotes school choice and voucher programs. She and members of her family have given millions of dollars to Republican candidates over nearly three decades, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
She grew up in Holland, Michigan, one of four children of Edgar Prince, an engineer who made a fortune in an auto parts company. She met her husband Dick DeVos, an heir to the Amway marketing empire, while attending a Christian liberal arts college. Dick DeVos unsuccessfully ran for governor of Michigan in 2006. During that campaign he suggested that schools should teach intelligent design, a theory that holds that life was created by a higher force, along with evolution. The couple has four children, none of whom attended public school.
Her brother, Erik Prince, founded Blackwater, a private security company that the U.S. employed in the Iraq war and came under scrutiny when its guards were prosecuted in the deaths of 14 civilians in Baghdad in 2007.
DeVos has donated to the political campaigns of at least four committee members, according to the financial questionnaire she filed with the committee. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, top Democrat on the committee, said she worries about DeVos' "extensive financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest."
In response, Trump's transition team said teachers unions have donated to Democratic senators on the committee and DeVos has given money to members in both parties who support her education goals. Republicans also point out that Penny Pritzker was a major donor to Democrats and President Barack Obama before he picked her as commerce secretary.
DeVos spent the past two decades advancing charter schools — institutions that are run privately but financed with taxpayers' money. Her husband started an aviation-oriented charter school in Michigan. She also has pushed for providing low-income families with publicly funded vouchers to enable them to send their kids to private and religious schools of their choice.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said DeVos has an obvious antipathy to public schools and has "fought against any regulation that protected against cronyism and corruption."
DeVos supporters counter that injecting healthy competition into the public school system will be to everyone's benefit. "The ability to shop around for education options that work best for your child is really key here," said Mary Clare Reim, a research associate with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Labor unions and civil rights groups also question whether DeVos' traditional beliefs may prevent her from championing the interests of LGBT students and other minorities.
DeVos has donated to a number of conservative groups, including Focus on the Family, which calls homosexuality a "sin" and supports "sexual orientation change efforts." Her record prompted five openly gay senators to write to the committee saying she's repeatedly tried to undermine LGBT rights.
But Greg McNeilly, a long-time aide to DeVos, said DeVos supports same-sex marriage and last donated to Focus on the Family many years ago, when the group was involved in character-building for children and "absolutely never" supported conversion therapy. McNeilly is gay.
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Webster
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Jan 17 2017, 02:17 PM
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(The Guardian) Background --Rarely are nominees for education secretary controversial, but Donald Trump’s choice of the Republican fundraiser and activist Betsy DeVos has sounded alarm bells for more reasons than one.
DeVos, a conservative billionaire, will receive a confirmation hearing on Tuesday afternoon before the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee. Her testimony was delayed by a week when Democrats raised concerns over what they dubbed DeVos’s “extensive financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest”.
Her family’s cumulative wealth is estimated at $5.1bn, which, coupled with her extensive financial holdings, reportedly overwhelmed the federal watchdog agency tasked with vetting cabinet nominees. DeVos has donated extensively to Republican candidates, Super Pacs and party committees, with an emphasis on expanding charter schools and taxpayer-funded vouchers for both private and religious schools.
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Webster
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Jan 17 2017, 02:18 PM
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(The Guardian) Key points to watch for --Conflicts of interest: In advance of the hearing, Democrats penned a letter calling on DeVos to disclose more financial information surrounding her contributions to political advocacy and lobbying groups.
DeVos has said she will sever “all connections” with her current business if confirmed, as well as resign as the chairman of the investment firm she launched with her husband, the Windquest Group, which has donated heavily to education-related causes that include charter schools and school vouchers.
But Democrats have complained that DeVos has not sufficiently addressed questions of conflicts of interest. They have pointed to her prior comments that donors “expect a return on our investment” – remarks which are likely to prompt questions on her approach to independent governance.
--School choice: DeVos has never served in public office, but her support for conservative education reforms in Michigan offers a blueprint for her agenda if she is confirmed to Trump’s cabinet.
She has aggressively pushed to redirect taxpayer funds towards vouchers for low-income families who school choice advocates say are being failed by public schools.
In 2000, she was a major proponent of a failed ballot initiative in Michigan that would have amended the state’s constitution to establish a voucher system for students to attend private and religious schools.
Critics have said school vouchers lead to an environment lacking in adequate oversight, in addition to paving the way for education profiteering.
Religious influence: DeVos and her family have donated significant money to Christian schools and evangelical causes, including Focus on the Family, a group that touted gay conversion therapy – a scientifically discredited attempt to alter an individual’s sexual orientation.
The founder of Focus on the Family, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the DeVoses, has labelled public curricula as “godless and immoral” and suggested Christian teachers should leave public education.
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Webster
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Jan 19 2017, 02:27 AM
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CNS News: Education Secretary Designate - States & Localities Should Decide Guns In Schools

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(CNSNews.com) – “Do you think that guns have any place in and around schools?” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Betsy DeVos at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday evening.
“I think that’s best left to locales and states to decide,” she said. “If the underlying question is--”
“You can’t say definitively today that guns shouldn’t be in schools?” an incredulous Murphy interrupted.
Murphy made gun control one of his priorities following the Dec. 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, where 20 children and six adults were killed by a mentally ill man who brought a gun into a gun-free zone.
“Well I will refer back to Sen. Enzi and the school that he was talking bout in Wapiti, Wyoming,” DeVos replied. “I would imagine that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.”
(Sen. Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, had told DeVos in an earlier conversation about the rural Wapiti school having a fence surrounding it to protect children from grizzly bears.)
Sen. Murphy asked DeVos, “If President Trump move forward with his plan to ban gun-free school zones, will you support that proposal?”
“I will support what the president-elect does, but Senator, if-- if the question is around gun violence and the results of that, please know that I – I, my heart bleeds and is broken for those families that have lost any individual due to gun violence,” DeVos said.
“I look forward to working with you,” Murphy said grimly, “but I also look forward to you coming to Connecticut and talking about the role of guns in schools.” He shut off his microphone before the final word was out of his mouth.
During the presidential campaign, Trump told an NRA gathering in May 2016, “We’re getting rid of gun-free zones, OK?”
A few days later, Trump told CNN he doesn’t want students sitting in class with guns. He said teachers and school resource officers should be allowed to carry guns, “in some cases.”
"If trained people had guns, you wouldn't have the carnage that you've had,” Trump told CNN.
"The problem with gun free zones is, it's like offering up candy to bad people. They hear gun free zones and they go in there with their guns blazing."
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