Everything you want to know about Betsy Devos

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1370319352978829/permalink/1488959581114805/

Everything you want to know about Betsy Devos and why she should not be confirmed to this position of Secretary of Education.

The day of the DeVos appointment .... "Tonya Allen, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, and co-chair of Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, said on Wednesday that she is extraordinarily happy for DeVos and is grateful she is a supporter of Common Core." http://www.detroitnews.com/…/trump-devos-education/94344918/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

"Michigan parent activist Karen Braun tells Breitbart News DeVos never used any of her time or wealth to assist parents in her state in their efforts to repeal Common Core. “DeVos prefers to be out of the limelight and let others like the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) do the heavy lifting,” Braun says. “But activists and lawmakers in Michigan know her pro-Common Core position very well.”

http://www.breitbart.com/…/bush-praises-trump-choice-betsy…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“Her organization, American Federation for Children, contributed HUGE sums of money for state school board races in Alabama on the side of Common Core supporters trying to oust Common Core opponents.”

“Trump’s transition team reported that his “discussion with DeVos was focused on the Common Core mission, and setting higher national standards and promoting the growth of school choice across the nation.” I wanted to scream when I heard those words! “Setting higher nations standards” is code for Common Core. National standards are what Common Core was designed to be.” 

http://newswithviews.com/Nelson/kelleigh373.htm #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“Many of us are skeptical that she is not a supporter of Common Core as she has not spoken out against it one time during the seven years it was being implemented and as she sat on the Board of Jeb Bush’s organization, Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE).” 

“If she doesn’t see major problems with ESSA, FERPA regulations which are meaningless and the increased data tracking of students from birth/Pre-K through their careers, then your concerns about Ms. Devos as Education Secretary (her lack of educational experience, NGO connections) are probably well-founded. It will also be incumbent upon those in the confirmation hearings to question her on exactly what she has done to raise student achievement.”

http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/stuffing-the-public-e…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“It simply doesn’t make sense that DeVos would contribute boatloads of money to – and even lead — organizations that actively push a policy with which she disagrees. Would a pro-life philanthropist write checks to Planned Parenthood because the abortion mill provides the occasional Pap test?”

https://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/…/trumps-common-cor…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“DeVos argues that she supports these groups’ advocacy of school choice but not Common Core. But the Trump transition team itself announced that Trump’s “discussion with [DeVos] was focused on the Common Core mission, and setting higher national standards . . . .” And even without this admission, it simply doesn’t make sense that DeVos would contribute boatloads of money to – and even lead -- organizations that actively push a policy with which she disagrees. Would a pro-life philanthropist write checks to Planned Parenthood because the abortion mill provides the occasional Pap test?”

http://townhall.com/…/jane…/2016/11/30/jebs-revenge-n2252295 #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“DeVos and GLEP lobbied the Michigan legislature to implement and maintain Common Core and related reforms. Former MI State Representative, now State School Board member-elect Tom McMillin, recently spoke to our team about DeVos and her claim that she is against Common Core. McMillin, a strong opponent of Common Core, recalled that in 2013 DeVos specifically told him she was for Common Core during the very contentious legislative debate to stop implementation.”

DeVos, who backed Sen. Marco Rubio during the primary, and then served as an at-large delegate for Ohio Gov. John Kasich at the Republican National Convention, was opposed to Trump’s nomination for president, referring to him as an “interloper” who would never achieve the nomination because he didn’t “represent the Republican Party.”

http://www.breitbart.com/…/common-core-opponents-trump-dra…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“Michigan supporters of the Common Core standards are praising President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head up the U.S. Department of Education.”

http://www.breitbart.com/…/michigan-common-core-supporters…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

"So much so that his pick for Secretary of Education is now backtracking on her years of actions financially supporting Common Core. She sits on Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education. This foundation LOVES Common Core and all that comes with it. DeVos, through the Betsy and Steve DeVos Foundation, poured millions of dollars into pro-Common Core candidates."

https://exceptionaldelaware.wordpress.com/…/america-is-get…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

"I've seen (and written about) the policy influence of the FEE (and others against Common Core) right here in Oklahoma during our Common Core fight (and apparently, education activists in Michigan have witnessed the exact same top-down policy-pushing from the DeVos Foundation first hand). I KNOW how money creates and dictates policy, yet I thought this to be EXACTLY the kind of thing you said you would fight against as president. None of this bodes well for American education moving forward, nor our trust in you to uphold your campaign promises."

http://reclaimoklahomaparentempowerment.blogspot.com/…/ques… #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

"Hensley-Clancy writes that DeVos now claims to be against Common Core, of all things! That’s sure news to all the grassroots folks she pit her big money against during their legislative battles to reject Common Core. Grassroots folks report to me that DeVos’ husband personally called state senators in Michigan to get them to vote against a Common Core repeal bill. DeVos’ American Federation for Children also contributed huge sums of money for state school board races in Alabama on the side of Common Core supporters trying to oust Common Core opponents."

https://www.conservativereview.com/…/betsy-devos-as-educati… #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommnonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

"Betsy DeVos has no record of Common Core opposition. The website statement and tweet the day she was appointed were the first indications of being against Common Core ever documented. In fact, she has been described as supporting Common Core by Tonya Allen of the Skillman Foundation in the Detroit News. There is absolutely no record of her or any of the three major organizations that she has founded, chaired or still chairs, and funds The Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP), The American Federation for Children (AFC), and the Philanthropy Roundtable (PR) ever having opposed Common Core. She never reached out to, and in fact, steadfastly refused to meet with or assist Stop Common Core in Michigan in any way. The GLEP executive director even threatened these parents with legal action."

http://www.flstopcccoalition.org/…/betsy-jeb-high-standard…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

MidEast Policy Council’s “Teach MidEast” and its “Bridges at School” curriculum. (She’s also a Common Core supporter and fought to make this anti-Israel crap part of the Common Core agenda taught at America’s public schools.)"

"Betsy DeVos and her husband Dick DeVos (also born into money) are donors and contributors to ACCESS–the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services. And they also attend ACCESS annual fundraising dinners."

http://www.debbieschlussel.com/…/betsy-devos-affirmative-a…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

MICHIGAN SCHOOLS

“If you look at the DeVos role and engagement in Michigan politics over the last three decades, you’ll see a very consistent brand and pattern of political contributions,” McNeilly said. “Seldom have they accurately been called part of the establishment.” However if you ask any grassroots Republican or active Tea Party member, they will tell you otherwise.”

http://settingrecordstraight.blogspot.com/…/why-is-devos-fa… #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“DeVos and the Great Lakes Education Project* (GLEP) group she has funded and directed, still have time to support this bill and demand it be put on the calendar and voted on. *Unfortunately, GLEP had previously stated that they “support common core”, perhaps they have since changed their mind? Sadly, another group partnered with GLEP, the Michigan Coalition for High Student Standards, actually testified against SB-826 on April 19, 2016.”

http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/michigan-has-bill-to-…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“ DeVos is part of the Lansing “swamp.” Through her group, Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) she works to silence opposition and defeat legislation that would stop Common Core in Michigan.”

“We change policy through political effort. to elect or defeat candidates in states based on this issue [school choice]. Their support or lack of support for the issue. Then we work on the policies, the legislation, the actual programs that they would consider. and we advocate to get those passed in the legislatures and with the Governors.”

http://stopcommoncoreinmichigan.com/…/dick-betsy-devos-adm…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“In 2014, for example, DeVos and her husband Doug donated $1.45 million to Michigan lawmakers to defeat a bill that would have increased scrutiny of publicly-funded, for-profit charter schools.”

http://ateacheronteaching.blogspot.com/…/betsy-devos-amway-… #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

"As one of the architects of Detroit’s charter school system, she is partly responsible for what even charter advocates acknowledge is the biggest school reform disaster in the country. At least some of the other candidates for education secretary, like Michelle Rhee, the former District of Columbia schools chancellor, led reforms that were accompanied by improved student results."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/…/betsy-devos-and-the-wrong-way-t… #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

“Michigan is one of the nation’s biggest school choice laboratories, especially with charter schools. The Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids school districts have among the nation’s 10 largest shares of students in charters, and the state sends $1 billion in education funding to charters annually. Of those schools, 80 percent are run by for-profit organizations, a far higher share than anywhere else in the nation.”

“The DeVoses, the most prominent name in state Republican politics, have been the biggest financial and political backers of the effort.”

“But if Michigan is a center of school choice, it is also among the worst places to argue that choice has made schools better. As the state embraced and then expanded charters over the past two decades, its rank has fallen on national reading and math tests. Most charter schools perform below the state average.”

https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/…/trump-ed-sec-pick-betsy-…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

DATA MINING

“Apparently, Ms. DeVos supports allowing big technology companies to datamine children, 50,000 data points per hour, without parents knowing about it or ever seeing how the data are shared, used and profiled.”

“DeVos is Chair of The Philanthropy Round Table, a group that focuses on Venture Capital Philanthropy (and making “serious money“) and also promotes computer-based datamining and as an added bonus, this group Chaired by Devos is also excited about Common Core.” 

http://missourieducationwatchdog.com/dreambox-datamining-d…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

OHIO ELECTION FINES

"A pro-school-choice organization once directed by Besty DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for education secretary, owes a record $5.3 million in fines to the Ohio Elections Commission."

http://www.dispatch.com/…/Group_once_led_by_Trump_education… #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

MUSLIM CONNECTION

To be clear, Michigan has the most concentrated Muslim population outside of the Middle East. This is in large part because of an organization called the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), based in Dearborn, Michigan. ACCESS, is the largest social services nonprofit org in the nation and was founded by Ismael Ahmed. As noted here, where it is shown Ahmed was running for the MI Board of Education, “Ismael grew ACCESS into a national human service and advocacy agency with affiliates in 24 cities.” 

ACCESS, is funded by the Dick and Betsey Devos Foundation along with http://teachmideast.org/about/featured-partnerships/

http://www.voicesempower.com/trump-devos-national-security…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

CLINTON DONATIONS

West Michigan Politics reported that, like Donald Trump himself, the DeVos family has donated to the Clinton Foundation:

According to a WMP analysis of Clinton Foundation records, the DeVos family donated between $60,000-$130,000.

http://www.educationviews.org/trump-education-chief-pick-b…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

STEVE DEACE

Check out The Legacy of Thanksgiving. Deace speaks about the DeVos choice starting at 2 minutes. https://player.fm/series/steve-deace-show-117577 #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

Dangers of Vouchers

Dangers of vouchers. Trump’s voucher plan. A 38 minute podcast on vouchers and their danger by KrisAnne Hall, lawyer and Constitutional advocate. There is a full all out push coming and it will be led by DeVos. If successful it will accomplish putting parents under control of federal gov. Will increase money spent by feds on education from $540,000,000 to $130 billion ($20B from the feds and $110B from the states) if the Trump plan is implemented. Control of all parents/children under the poverty level if they sign on to new voucher programs. Take the money and take the mandates of national curriculum and national methodology. 

https://www.podomatic.com/…/episo…/2016-11-29T07_29_17-08_00 #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommnonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

Those answers “combined with her record of support for very regulated voucher plans in Indiana and Louisiana that require administration of the state (Common Core) tests … is extremely concerning for the autonomy and viability of private schools,” she adds.

http://www.breitbart.com/…/sen-lamar-alexander-delays-vote…/ #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommnonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

Anyone else notice the DeVos donee's are praising her and not the grassroots, parents and school activists?​

If DeVos was truly anti-common core, someone will be able to list her activism and donations towards anti-common core causes. Hell, I'll take a minimal anti-common core statement. Start the day before her appointment (11/16/16) then go back years. Is there anything? Please list it below.

This is from Jeb Bushes Excellence in Education (Excel In Ed) national common core/Fed Ed education institute. This was taken the day of the DeVos appointment (11/16/16). If she was so anti-common core why is she on this board and a major donor? Alternatively, do you think Jeb had a board member that was working against him on his board ... for years? Do you think she’d donate to a cause she doesn’t believe in… for years?

Trump was the one who said he would end the DoED. He was the one that said he would end common core. Trump said he only hires the best people. So when Trump has the opportunity to translate his campaign language into action, he appoints a pro-common core person. This is holding Trump to his word. He failed. That isn't a past grievance between us, it's an action he chose to do. Nothing to do with me.

What would you be saying if Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, was selected as the head of HSS? Then the day of that appointment Richards swears that she is now prolife and will only pursue prolife policies. Wouldn't you be skeptical? Or more likely, wouldn't you scream foul at the fundamental betrayal? #StopDeVos #Trump #StopCommonCore #WakeUpAmerica #KellyanneConway #TCOT #CCOT #CommonCore

Please explain how you can be a top donor and board member of the national pro common core Jeb Bush Foundation, then have an appointment day epiphany and wash years of pro-common core activism and millions of dollars in donations away?

Both FreedomWorks and Heritage will endorse their mega donor. The legislators, prone to follow the money and not do their homework, will hide behind that endorsement and confirm her. The DeVos' have given millions to their state party and the RNC. Simply put, they can't afford not to confirm her.

Because "choice" is a false choice... it comes with control that homogenizes and degrades almost all education over time. The only uncontrolled schools will be those that don't accept state aid, vouchers, etc. and those will, of course, the super expensive schools that only the elite can send their children to.

"Choice" is a trap. Parents run to it to escape the mess that is being made of public education only to find that education reform relentlessly follows them wherever they go. There is no escape with ESSA and WOIA. You *WILL* be assimilated.

School Choice is just a vehicle the CCSS virus uses to spread. So now, instead of all public schools being hobbled by CCSS curriculum and testing, now nearly all schools will be hobbled. In so doing, of course "choice" becomes no real choice at all. We just end up with a bunch of crappy schools... some private, some charter, some public... all indistinguishable, at least at the classroom level.

Adding accountability and competition to schools just turns our current socialized education entitlement into a fascist education mandate. They are both now vehicles for top down control. Just different faces of the same Statist coin. There is no educational freedom here. There is no marketplace. There is no choice. Its all just control and the serfs collar just gets tighter with each passing day.

http://m.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2017/02/04/education-at-a-crossroads-n2281488

Education at a Crossroads

In just a matter of days -- perhaps next Monday -- a decision will be made in Washington affecting the futures of millions of children in low-income communities, and in the very troubled area of race relations in America. 

An opportunity has arisen -- belatedly -- that may not come again in this generation. That is an opportunity to greatly expand the kinds of schools that have successfully educated, to a high level, inner-city youngsters whom the great bulk of public schools fail to educate to even minimally adequate levels.

What may seem on the surface to be merely a matter of whether the U.S. Senate confirms or rejects the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be head of the U.S. Department of Education involves far bigger stakes. 

The teachers' unions and the education establishment in general know how big those stakes are, and have mounted an all-out smear campaign to prevent her from being confirmed.

SEE ALSO

What makes Mrs. DeVos seem so threatening to the teachers' unions and their political allies? 

She has, for more than 20 years, been promoting programs, laws and policies that enable parents to choose which schools their children will attend -- whether these are charter schools, voucher schools or parochial schools. 

Some of these charter schools -- especially those in the chain of the Success Academy schools and the chain of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools -- operate in low-income, minority neighborhoods in the inner-cities, and turn out graduates who can match the educational performances of students in affluent suburbs. What is even more remarkable, these charter schools are often housed in the very same buildings, in the very same ghettoes, where students in the regular public schools fail to learn even the basics in English or math.

You and I may think this is great. But, to the teachers' unions, such charter schools are a major threat to their members' jobs -- and ultimately to the unions' power or existence. 

If parents have a choice of where to send their children, many of those parents are not likely to send them to failing public schools, when there are alternative schools available that equip those youngsters with an education that can open the way to a far better future for them.

Already there are tens of thousands of children on waiting lists to get into charter schools, just in New York alone. Those waiting lists are a clear threat to teachers' unions, whose leaders think schools exist to provide guaranteed jobs for their members. 

Mrs. DeVos has shown for more than 20 years that she thinks schools exist to educate children. One of the biggest complaints about her is that, unlike Secretaries of Education before her, she does not come out of the government's education establishment. Considering what a miserable job that establishment has done, especially in inner-city schools, her independence is a plus. 

Teachers' unions have fought for years to prevent charter schools from being created. Now that such schools have been created, and there are now huge waiting lists, the teachers' unions have gotten politicians to put a numerical cap on the number of such schools, regardless of how large the waiting lists are.

Desperate attempts to smear Betsy DeVos, in order to prevent her from being confirmed as Secretary of Education, have not let the facts get in the way.

She is accused of "steering public dollars away from traditional public schools." But nobody can steer anything anywhere, when it is individual parents who make the decisions as to where they want their children educated. The money follows the children.

Neither the money nor the children get steered by education bureaucrats, as happens with traditional public schools.

If charter schools educate one-third of the students in a district, and get one-third of the money, how does that reduce the amount of money per child in the public school? Actually, charter schools usually get less money per student, but produce better results.

American education is at a crossroads. If the teachers' unions and their allies can defeat the nomination of Mrs. DeVos, and the Republicans substitute someone else more acceptable to the education establishment, a historic opportunity will be lost, and may never come again in this generation.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/schooled/2017/02/can_schools_help_americans_do_a_better_job_separating_fact_from_fake_news.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_fb_bot

How to Inform a More Perfect Union

Faith in—and basic knowledge of—America’s most essential institutions has rarely felt so tenuous. Can our educational system save us?

By Dana Goldstein     

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Archideaphoto/Thinkstock and Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Around Election Day, a prescient 2012 statement from retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter resurfaced on social media. Souter was speaking at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, and a member of the audience asked about the role of schools in producing “civically engaged students.”

“I’ll start with the bottom line,” the justice said, sighing deeply. “I don’t believe there is any problem of American politics and American public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution the United States and the structure of government.” He went on to express concern that an ill-informed and disgruntled electorate would turn toward an authoritarian ruler and suggested a revival of civics education in American high schools. “An ignorant people,” Souter said, channeling Thomas Jefferson, “can never remain a free people.”

In our reality-warping era of “alternative facts,” imaginary papal endorsements, “pizzagate,” and “widespread voter fraud,” it seems more important than ever to help people, especially young people, learn to sift fact from fiction and figure out how to engage constructively with their government. Not surprisingly, voices on both the left and right have begun to call for our educational system to work toward a fix.

At the confirmation hearings for Sen. Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse proclaimed, “We have a crisis of civic education. … This is a crisis when kids don’t understand the distinction between the legislative and executive branches.” Sasse went on, implausibly, to suggest President Obama was at fault, for confusing children with his aggressive use of executive actions. Still, Sasse is right about the widespread ignorance of the way the federal government works. A 2015 survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found only 31 percent of respondents could name all three branches of government.

The progressive Century Foundation is concerned, too. In a recent report it argued that Trump’s election indicates the “failure of our education system to instill an essential belief in the values of constitutional democracy,” such as freedom of the press and freedom of religion. There have been scores of news stories written about a single study out of Stanford that found that 80 percent of middle-schoolers can’t tell the difference between sponsored content and a news story, while less than a third of college students understand that a tweet from an activist group may be a biased source of news.

Could a push for media literacy and civics education unite conservatives and liberals who fear the rise of uninformed voters swayed by propaganda and “fake news”? As Chris Berdik recently reported in Slate, preliminary research suggests that students who receive media literacy training are better able than other students to evaluate the accuracy of political claims and distinguish advertising, entertainment, and advocacy from news.

But there’s reason to be skeptical, too. The media literacy and civics education movements aren’t new. And their history shows that when curriculum-writers and teachers wade into these waters, they often get caught up in ideological storms, buffeted by the very disagreements over facts and values that they hoped to teach children to overcome.

America would never have had a public education system if not for elite anxiety about the excesses of popular democracy. The civics education movement began in the 19^th century, when social reformers wanted teachers to make sure that the voters of the future would choose the right candidates—men who were rational, moral, and disinterested. Horace Mann, a founder of the common school movement, wrote in 1847 that public schools had the “power” to “redeem the state from social vices and crime.” The goal of education was to create “exemplary men—honest dealers, conscientious jurors, true witnesses, incorruptible voters and magistrates, good parents, good neighbors, good members of society.”

Beneath that lovely rhetoric were some uglier convictions. Protestant common school reformers such as Mann believed America’s fundamental democratic character was threatened by the swell of “papist” Catholic immigrants, and they wanted teachers to inculcate children with WASP morality. Indeed, calls for civics education have often been strongly ideological. During World War I, New York City public school teachers who refused to deliver prebaked lessons on the superiority of the United States to other nations were investigated and sometimes driven from their jobs. The same thing happened during the McCarthy era. All in all, tens of thousands of left-leaning American educators lost their jobs in red scares. Progressive educators, too, have pursued ideological goals under the guise of civics education. In 1943, the New York City teachers union produced a sample civics lesson that glorified Soviet communism.

These historic examples may seem extreme, but civics education continues to fall prey to ideological minefields. In Texas, where Republican legislators have fought hard to influence the social studies curriculum, the state standards for high school government classes refer frequently to the American “free market system” and call for students to “understand how government taxation and regulation can serve as restrictions to private enterprise.” (This is a longtime conservative educational priority. Amway, the multilevel marketing company owned by the family of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, runs a program in which volunteers visit classrooms to teach children “the fundamentals of free enterprise, business and economics.”) The Texas standards also refer to the “Judeo-Christian” and “Biblical law” roots of American democracy—phrases that appear nowhere in the social studies standards of liberal New York City.

When it comes to the economy, the New York City standards emphasize that the American system is not technically free market but rather a “mixed economy,” meaning it is shaped by both the market and by government regulation. The New York City Department of Education suggests that 12^th-graders explore the question, “Is American capitalism sustainable? … Economic policymakers face considerable challenges within a capitalist system, including unemployment, inflation, poverty, and environmental impact.” The content of civics education inevitably flows from the political principles of the school district and state.

The Common Core standards that are currently driving curricular change across the country attempt to thread the ideological needle on civics education. They focus on the importance of students reading and analyzing primary historical sources such as the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the U.S. Constitution, and various Supreme Court decisions. Pretty much everyone can agree those documents are crucial to a good education, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to discuss without debating contemporary politics. For example, how heavily should teachers emphasize the discrimination against women and minorities that is baked into our founding documents? Will administrators or parents complain if teachers raise questions about whether Donald Trump’s travel ban is constitutional? As I’ve reported for Slate, one campaign-season survey of mostly progressive teachers found that 40 percent were scared to discuss the election with their students, lest they hear complaints from parents or administrators.

They may be right to worry. In a July blog post, the conservative-leaning education advocate Robert Pondiscio wrote about psychology research that suggests that civics education celebrating multiculturalism as a positive value risks provoking an intense conservative backlash. Individuals in the majority group tend to turn toward authoritarianism when they feel the monolithic society they grew up in is “coming apart.” It would be more politically unifying, Pondiscio suggested, to base civics education around the constitutional ideals that unite Americans. “There is good evidence to think that the key to creating conditions that sincerely welcome and celebrate diversity may lie in focusing the attention of our children on what makes us one country and one people,” he wrote. “The challenge for our diverse, pluralistic and democratic society—a challenge that, as ever, falls most heavily on schools, the civic institutions with the broadest reach in American life—is to blunt the sense that we are, in fact, coming apart.” 

A liberal might respond that minority students or girls will feel left out by a curriculum that does not reflect their struggles and unique experiences and that those in majority groups will get a richer education if they are exposed to diverse cultures and perspectives. In short, it’s difficult to imagine a purely nonideological or unifying civics curriculum. And in truth, there has never been a time when American classrooms had one.

The media literacy movement is a historically newer attempt to deal with the same problems that civics education tackles: the ability of students to grow into informed and empathetic citizens. According to Renee Hobbs, director of the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island, the movement can be traced back to the early 1940s, when books with titles such as How to Read a Newspaper were popular. In that work, Edgar Dale, a professor at Ohio State University, explained that newspapers were businesses supported by advertisers; that the reporting and editing process could introduce errors and leave out important information; and that headlines were, by necessity, incomplete and sometimes misleading attempts to capture the audience’s attention.

If these revelations seem anodyne today, it is only because media critique has become such a central part of our culture. Media literacy theorists are amused by the attention their field has received since Election Day from journalists looking for solutions to the spread of viral conspiracy theories. For decades, media literacy education has “corrected misinformation and dealt with the question of whether media messages can and do tell the truth,” Hobbs said. “That has always been fundamental.”

The media literacy movement picked up steam after World War II, when English teachers shocked by revelations about the Holocaust developed curricular materials on how to spot propaganda. Then, in the 1970s, popular and visual culture became more central. Kodak funded efforts to introduce “visual literacy” into the curriculum, teaching children that photographers and filmmakers make editorial decisions each time they frame and edit their shots.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was an explosion of interest in media literacy education, driven by both liberal and conservative concerns. Some of it trickled down from the academic cultural studies movement, as progressives increasingly wanted students to deconstruct the sexist, racist, and otherwise bigoted stereotypes in films, TV shows, news stories, and advertisements. (The magazine Adbusters, a staple of grunge-era alternative culture, was founded in 1989. It went on to play a key role in the Occupy Wall Street movement.) Simultaneously, culture warriors were deeply worried about children’s exposure to violence on film and later, in the age of school shootings, on violence in video games.

A commitment to media literacy “tends to bubble up from the grassroots—a passionate teacher who says, ‘My kids don’t know how to analyze advertising.’ Or, ‘Look at this terrible example of violence the kids are celebrating and laughing at and being desensitized to,’ ” Hobbs said. “From the right, media literacy teachers in Tulsa are worried about satanic imagery in Disney movies.”

In 2017, the idea that you can’t trust the media has become a cliché. But this cynicism can be dangerous, says Paul Mihailidis, a media literacy theorist and associate professor at Emerson College. In a 2013 study, Mihailidis examined the attitudes of students at the University of Maryland, some of whom were enrolled in a media literacy course and some of whom were not. The students who completed the class were better able to critically analyze media sources. But they also demonstrated negative and even hopeless views, which could prompt them to distrust even reliable sources of information. In one representative comment, a student said, “I personally feel like organizations are out to get us. I think everyone needs to question everything. I think when the media tell you something on the news, they aren’t trying to give you information, but trying to benefit themselves.”

If media literacy education doesn’t move beyond critique to also offer examples of how the media can create positive change—such as when an investigative reporter reveals an injustice, or a citizen uses social media to organize a petition or protest—it can lead to “more cynicism toward civic engagement,” Mihailidis said. “Media literacy is now being seen as a panacea or solution,” he added, but effective media literacy empowers students to consume and create good content, not just critique the bad stuff. In other words, skepticism toward sources is good, but a blanket cynicism is counterproductive to the civic ends that media literacy theorists hope to achieve: a more informed and engaged public.

At their heart, these pedagogical movements are really about knowledge and skills that ought to be developed in any decent history or English class: an understanding of our nation’s founding and laws and an ability to consume media critically and seek out accurate sources of information. If our schools aren’t excelling at those tasks, the solutions may be old hat: better teacher training, stronger curricular materials, and more funding for schools that are especially struggling to provide good instruction.

What’s more, the outlook may not be as grim as postelection prognosticators make it out to be. The same 2015 Annenberg survey that found ignorance of the three branches of government had some bright spots. Eighty-one percent of respondents knew the Constitution protected the right to peacefully assemble, and 69 percent knew it protected against unreasonable searches and seizures. Seventy-six percent said government should not be able to prevent the press from publishing articles critical of the government. With a new president who has condemned protesters and journalists, that’s knowledge that may come in handy. Americans are more prepared for the era of alternative facts than we thought.

Dana Goldstein is the author of The Teacher Wars. She contributes to Slate, the New Republic, the Marshall Project, and other publications. 

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‘Damaging’ transgender curriculum is about to invade 7-year-olds’ classrooms in the UK

The taxpayer-funded Educate & Celebrate has published a number of books for young children promoting gender confusion. 

Lisa Bourne Follow Lisa

January 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – In a move that’s causing controversy, children as young as seven will be exposed to gender ideology in UK elementary schools later this month through a new book from an LGBT activist on “medical transitioning.”

The taxpayer-funded Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? by CJ Atkinson, approved by the United Kingdom’s Department for Education, advises teachers, parents and students against using language suggesting there are only two genders. It shows the use of hormone blockers through a fictional 12-year-old who is “transitioning” from female to male so she can stop the onset of puberty.

Religious leaders and politicians in the UK are among those calling the book  ”damaging,” but the book’s author is pushing back.

“We call it trans-panic,” Atkinson stated in an interview with The Guardian. “This mud-slinging has to stop. It causes active harm.” Atkinson then cited the high rate of suicide attempts among transgender youth.

“The world is changing,” the author argued. “A book like this is needed.”

What will kids read in the book?

The 60-page book is part of the Can I Tell You About series that covers issues such as eating disorders, depression and autism. Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? begins with the passage:

“My name is Kit and I’m 12 years old. I live in a house with my mum and dad, and our dog, Pickle. When I was born, the doctors told my mum and dad that they had a baby girl, and so for the first few years of my life that’s how my parents raised me. This is called being assigned female at birth. I wasn’t ever very happy that way.”

The Kit character then begins to use the puberty-blocking drugs to undergo a sex change to “stop my body developing in ways that make me unhappy.”

Kit’s “transition” entails wearing boys’ clothes, using male pronouns, and changing her birth certificate to show Christopher instead of Kit. The character discusses the possibility of surgery and also taking testosterone at 16 so that her body will imitate all the same puberty changes of males.

A bewildering array of terminology

Gender and sexuality are described in the book with what the Daily Mail called “a bewildering array of alternative terms,” which include “cisgender” for children “who think of themselves as being the gender which they were born,” as well as “panromantic,” “intersex,” “genderqueer” and “xe.”

Terms such as “ladies” and “gents,” and “boys” and “girls” are condemned in the book lest they discriminate against transgender students.

Atkinson — who identifies as “queer” and prefers the pronouns they, their and them —  insists that activists are not trying to “break everything down so that there’s nothing, so there’s no meaning in anything.” They rather see themselves as “opening it up so everybody can have access to everything.”

Who else is behind it?

Distributed by Educate & Celebrate, a UK government-funded entity that works to “transform schools and organisations into LGBT+Friendly places,” Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity? is billed by London-based Jessica Kingsley Publishers as “the first book to explain medical transitioning for children aged seven and above.”

According to a spokesman for the publisher, the book was commissioned because of  insufficient resources in schools.

“The introduction of gender-neutral toilets and non-binary pronouns are important first steps, but there is a definite lack of resources out there for teachers, parents and children themselves,” the spokesperson said. “This book will spark discussion in the classroom and at home, answering difficult questions that children may have about gender diversity.”

Copies of the book will be sent to the 120 "best practice" schools with which Jessica Kingsley works, and the publisher expects hundreds more head teachers to purchase Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity?

Outrage

Opposition to the book has come from at least one media outlet, as well as UK government and religious officials.

The Daily Mail’s Sarah Vine criticized it in her column, calling for the “nonsense” to stop.

“In attempting to improve the lives of a vanishingly small minority, we are threatening the sanity of — and yes I’m going to say it — normal children,” Vine wrote. “It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.”

“I think it is damaging to children to introduce uncertainty into their minds,” former Tory Party chairman Lord Tebbit said.

The prior Master of Wellington College said respect for all includes those who believe in traditional values.

“We have to respect the feelings of everybody, including teachers and parents who want traditional modes followed,” Anthony Seldon stated.

Anglican Bishop of Chester Peter Forster said the book would not be helpful in addressing the issue of gender confusion, adding, “This is likely to sow more confusion than clarity.”

Encouraging the problem

Mental health experts have also concluded that encouraging gender confusion and intervening medical is damaging to children.

“Gender identity” is not separate from biological sex, according to an August 2016 report from Dr. Paul McHugh, a former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital and distinguished service professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, and Lawrence Mayer, an Arizona State University professor of statistics and biostatistics.

“The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence," their report said.

The researchers also took issue with diagnosing gender dysphoria in children, as most will outgrow gender confusion and attempts to push acceptance of a “transgender” state only aggravate their confusion.

“Children are a special case when addressing transgender issues. Only a minority of children who experience cross-gender identification will continue to do so into adolescence or adulthood,” they stated.

Some of the medical interventions featured in Atkinson’s book are found in the report in particular to be harmful to children. The researchers found “little scientific evidence” for the therapeutic value of such interventions and called medical interventions for gender-nonconforming youth “an area of particular concern.”

Conditioning anyone to undertake impersonation of the opposite gender through surgery or chemical treatments is detrimental, the authors also concluded, as adults who opt for sex-reassignment surgeries experience “a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes.”

The support for this conclusion was found in a referenced study that indicated individuals who had undergone “sex reassignment” were approximately five times more likely to attempt suicide and about 19 times more likely to die by suicide.

Atkinson’s book is also available for sale online.

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Is President Trump Being Played by Betsy DeVos and Jeb Bush?

February 3, 2017 By Erin Tuttle and Jane Robbins 2 Comments

Conservatives have been gratified by some of President Trump’s Cabinet choices but alarmed by others. Observers who remember the first Reagan administration may find parallels between the two presidents’ situations – Cabinet picks who went on to undermine the president’s agenda.  Are the very establishment Republicans whom Trump ran against trying to out-maneuver him?

The most obvious area of similarity is education. Candidate Reagan promised to eliminate the recently created U.S. Department  of Education (USED), but as it turned out, his selection of Terrel Bell as secretary of education effectively nullified that commitment.

Bell had once testified in support of the bill to establish USED.  But upon his nomination Bell reversed course and professed to agree with Reagan that USED should be abolished. His subsequent tenure at the department, though, reflected his underlying desire to prevent, as one of his colleagues put it, the “right-wing ideological nuts” from prevailing on education policy.

Despite Reagan’s objections, Bell used his authority as secretary to appoint a commission to assess the federal role in education. The commission’s report (A Nation at Risk) concluded that the public school system was broken, and without a larger federal role in education, it couldn’t be “fixed.” Bell then drove a national campaign to publicize the findings and build support for USED.  By this clever maneuvering he was able to save the department – and undercut his boss’s avowed intention to diminish or eliminate federal involvement in education.  In fact, as one commentator observed, Bell “left [USED] . . . healthier and more resistant to White House meddling than it had been when he signed on.”

Will history repeat in the Trump administration?  During the campaign Trump repeatedly promised to end the Common Core national standards and restore local control over education. He took every opportunity to ridicule Jeb Bush’s opposition to both these goals.  President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, currently claims to be “not a supporter” of Common Core – as Terrel Bell claimed to oppose USED.  But, like Bell, DeVos has a history that belies her claim.  According to Michigan education activists, she and her organizations there were influential in defeating attempts to free their state from the national standards.

DeVos is also closely aligned with Bush and his preferred policies (such as increased student data-collection and replacement of teacher-led instruction with digital training). Not only has DeVos donated generously to his foundation, but she has also served on its board. And it’s worth noting that at the GOP convention, DeVos cast her vote not for Trump but for Common Core-supporter John Kasich.

The individuals whom DeVos is reportedly considering for top staff positions not likely to toe the conservative line. Reportedly, the USED deputy secretary position may be awarded to Allan Hubbard, an Indiana businessman who generously supported individuals and organizations devoted to imposing Common Core.  Hubbard serves on the board of directors of the strongly pro-Common Core Lumina Foundation and was a major donor to Common Core spokesman Tony Bennett (the Indiana state school superintendent whose enthusiasm for the national standards provoked his ouster by irate Hoosiers).  Other pro-Common Core, pro-progressive-education heavyweights, such as New Mexico Education Secretary Hanna Skandera and former Louisiana Superintendent Paul Pastorek, have been mentioned as possibilities for top jobs.  And the new senior White House education adviser, Jason Botel, gushed in a previous job at how “excited” he was about Common Core.

These are the people whom DeVos will count on to fulfill the president’s anti-Common Core, pro-local control agenda?

These developments suggest that Trump’s education agenda is headed for a quiet burial at the hands of political appointees, just as Reagan’s was. And unless the grassroots who relied on Trump’s education promises can make enough noise to get his attention, the golden opportunity he has to be their champion will disappear.

There is a further parallel between the Reagan and Trump dissident-appointee scenarios. The other Reagan Cabinet member who pursued a different agenda –  to the point of threatening Reagan’s goals in other areas – was Secretary of State Alexander Haig.  Haig finally resigned and was replaced by George Schultz, who by all accounts placed Reagan’s agenda – which led to the end of the Cold War — above his own.

Trump’s choice for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, similarly raises alarm bells with many Americans. Tillerson has been described as a corporatist, comfortable in the swampy world of deals and unlikely to let principle get in the way. He’s also infamous to education activists as a Common Core bully, implicitly threatening the Pennsylvania governor if he allowed his state to replace the national standards. Tillerson succinctly expressed the utilitarian, workforce-development view of education when he described children as “defective products” of the education system if they couldn’t be immediately put to use by the system’s corporate “customers.”

While K-12 education wouldn’t be officially part of Tillerson’s portfolio as secretary of state, he could have significant influence on global education policy through the State Department’s work with the UN Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO). A man of this children-as-widgets mindset at the State Department could further undermine Trump’s education agenda.

Trump should also be wary of congressional sabotage. Establishment Republicans in Congress have dismissed grassroots warnings that Obama’s signature education bill— the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 — impedes Trump’s education agenda.  They say the law has already restored local control in education – a laughable claim, easily debunked (see here and here) —and so will probably resist Trump’s agenda to legitimately return education policy to the states. Trump was elected precisely to confound these establishmentarians and to crush their predictable attempts to dupe him.  The crowds who turned out for him, and gave him perhaps his biggest applause lines on this issue, desperately want a hero.

Does President Trump realize the threats to his education legacy that are being planted by his personnel choices and by congressional “frenemies”?  The education agenda of President Reagan was doomed by adversaries within his own administration.  Will Trump allow the same thing to happen to him?  Who’s the alpha dog here?  Jeb & Company?  Congress?  Or President Trump?

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What Can a President Do to Address Common Core?

March 7, 2016 By Shane Vander Hart

President Barack Obama signs S. 1177, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), during a bill a signing ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building South Court Auditorium, Dec. 10, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

It has been pointed out after the most recent GOP presidential debate that a President can’t repeal the Common Core State Standards.

I agree, ironically a federal mandate to end the Common Core in the states would be just as unconstitutional as the involvement by the Obama administration’s back door funding approach via Race to the Top. There is no legitimate federal role in education beyond addressing civil rights violations in the public schools when necessary and only when necessary, I wouldn’t consider the feds interjecting themselves into locker room and restroom policy as necessary, but I digress. That’s a topic for a different time and a different website.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution does not list education as an enumerated power of Congress. Our founders intended that education remain a local and state matter. That was always the case until Congress passed and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. President Jimmy Carter further expanded the federal involvement in education by forming the U.S. Department of Education in 1979. Yes, there was a Department of Education that was created in 1867, but it was downgraded to an office in 1868 and education was never a federal priority until the Johnson Administration.

I expect candidates whether they are presidential, Congressional or Senatorial to understand this. If they do not they get checked off my list pretty quickly.

So in the vein, what can a President do? Here are eight ideas.

1. Eliminate the U.S. Department of Education

I understand that this suggestion is a radical one for educrats who love centralized education. Show me what child the Department of Education has taught? Also how has K-12 public education improved under their watch? I think it’s fair to say it hasn’t. Kids somehow, magically, were educated long before there was a federal department of education. We sent a man to the moon 10 years before the department’s formation!

Politically speaking I understand this is a huge ask and it would require a ton of political capital, and perhaps a willingness to not be reelected. It would also require legislators willing to do the same.

2. Downgrade the U.S. Department of Education

Recognizing political reality at the moment an incremental step would be an attempt to downgrade the Department of Education and no longer have a Secretary of Education that serve’s on the President’s cabinet, but instead just have an appointed director instead. Again, this would require an act of Congress, but it would probably be an easier ask than eliminating the department in one swoop.

3. Reduce the size of the U.S. Department of Education

This is something the President can do through his or her budget proposal. Cut, not just slow the increase in spending, but cut the Department’s budget and cut the bureaucracy that exists within the department. Force programs to demonstrate results to justify their existence. Direct the Secretary (or Director) to implement zero-based budgeting (actually do that government-wide, but I digress again). Exercise the Presidential authority to line-item veto sections of the budget passed by Congress that increases spending.

4. Veto any bill that would expand the scope and reach of the Department of Education.

Simple enough – don’t allow the Department to grow in size or in oversight. This is the bare minimum for a candidate who says he or she believes in local control.

5. Eliminate any carrot and stick competitive grant program, and block grant all federal funds to the states.

If there has to be federal education dollars, the Department should act as a pass-through for those dollars to the states with little to no strings attached other than they be used for education, but let states decide how those dollars are used in education according to the original purpose stated in federal law. Work to reduce the regulation to dollar ratio we’ve see where schools receive relatively few federal dollars, but are ransacked by federal regulations. Cut through the regulations, and whatever the President can legally do through executive order he or she must do.

Also do not allow the funding of specific education trends or assessments.

6. Work to repeal the Every Student Succeeds Act

Advocate for the sunset of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in its current form, the Every Student Succeeds Act. The passing of this bill did not eliminate Common Core, in many ways it codified it through the law’s frequent mention of “college and career-ready standards,” as well as, other provisions of the law. The President should instruct the Secretary that they should give a lot of latitude when approving state plans until the law with it’s testing mandate is gone.

7. Insist on ending the student data-hungry culture in the U.S. Department of Education

Champion the tightening of FERPA by Congress. Eliminate by executive order any rule changes that weakened the law. Eliminate offices within the Department that pushed for increased student data collection. Work to eliminate any law or rule that requires data collection by the Department or requires states to collect data for the department.

8. Pick the right Secretary of Education

This goes without saying. It should be someone willing to work themselves out of a job. The candidate should value decentralized education over centralized education. That person should share and complement the President’s goals.

Those are some ideas starters, what else would you recommend?

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Expand retirement options, shrink teacher doldrums

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BENITA M. DODD: Expand retirement options, shrink teacher doldrums

Jan 31, 2017

PAGE, the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, has surveyed its members and the findings, reported in its latest 2017 newsletter (PAGE One), are depressing.

The survey found that nearly half of teachers (45 percent) say they are unlikely to remain in education for the next 10 years. Sadly, a majority — 53 percent — also said they would not recommend a career in education.

The report notes, “With the current teacher shortage and continuing teacher pipeline issues, these statistics are of great concern to PAGE.”

The survey also found that 59 percent of the respondents oppose converting the Teacher Retirement System from a defined benefit (pension) plan to a defined contribution (401(k)-type) plan. This is no surprise, given that PAGE reports 70 percent of the respondents were “veteran classroom teachers with more than 10 years in service,” according to the article.

After all, if you’ve invested that much in your pension plan already, why would you want to change the benefits?

Here’s why: To draw young, enthusiastic new teachers into the “pipeline,” it’s important to understand two things. The profession has become far more transient, with people changing districts, states and careers. According to the Fordham Institute, the average experience of a teacher who leaves the profession is 15 years; fewer than one in four stay for 25 years. Encouraging the profession means acknowledging the changing nature of education careers and adapting to that by facilitating portability of their retirement investment.

Second, the Georgia Public Policy Foundation’s Friday Facts of Jan. 28 cites a Fordham Institute study that finds teachers are getting a raw retirement deal.

Fordham examined teacher retirement systems in the nation’s largest school districts and found teachers have to wait an average of 25 years before the value of their pensions are larger than what they contribute themselves. Fordham cited Gwinnett County, Georgia’s largest public school district, where this “crossover point” for teachers is 13 years.

A Gwinnett County teacher who leaves after five years of service (or at any point before the vesting point of 10 years) is not eligible to receive pension benefits at all, because she has not vested. Her pension wealth is zero, and at five years she has contributed a total of $14,276 into the retirement systems. (In reality, should this teacher separate from the systems before she vests, she can only take a refund, which may or may not be credited with interest.)

In summary: The article in PAGE One declares there’s a teacher shortage in Georgia and reports that teachers don’t plan to stay more than 10 years and discourage others from entering the profession. It’s befuddling that teachers and teacher organizations with a commitment to educating Georgia’s children would oppose — for new hires, at least — a defined contribution plan, a 401(k)-type plan. At the very least, offer new teachers the hybrid defined benefit/defined contribution retirement plan in place since 2008 for all new Georgia state employees (with an option for existing employees to participate).

Portable retirement benefits would attract younger teachers by offering greater control over their careers so they don’t feel locked in or compelled to stay a minimum of 13 years in a profession merely to extract retirement benefits.

To oppose a 401(k)-type system seems to be cutting off your nose to spite your face. As a teacher, if you care about the children, you should care about who’s left behind to educate them when you leave. And about what kind of taxpayer debt you’re leaving behind for those children to cover those over-extended, taxpayer-funded pension plans.

According to PAGE, there are currently 261,408 active TRS members and 119,038 retirees who receive an average monthly benefit of $3,068.

Read more about Pension Reform in the Georgia Public Policy Foundation Guide to the Issues.

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