DeVos hides on Military base to pitch school choice

[PsychoBabble]

Betsy DeVos Pitches Voucher Schools at Only Public School Protesters Can't Get To: A Military Base
DeVos promotes privatization at military bases, religious schools and charter schools.

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos finally found a public school she could visit where she could avoid protests. It’s on a military base, safely inside the compound of Ft. Bragg in North Carolina.

As a local news outlet reports, DeVos used her appearance at Kimberly Hampton Primary, a school operated by the Department of Defense and funded by the federal government, to make her usual pitch for “school choice,” in this case, in the form of vouchers parents can use to withdraw their children from public schools and send them to private schools at taxpayer expense.

For DeVos to use this visit to a public school as an opportunity to tell parents they would do better for their kids by sending them to privately run schools suggests her leadership will continue to advocate for funding more alternative schools rather than supporting traditional ones.

The articles goes on to talk about her NEXT stop to use her position as Secretary of Education OF THE UNITED STATES to promote Christian private schools:

After the Ft. Bragg gig, DeVo’s next stop is CARE Elementary School in Miami, Florida.

CARE is a private school, for which DeVos has a well-known preference. Also, DeVos may want to showcase the school because its name, CARE, stands for Christian Academy for Reaching Excellence. DeVos’s belief in using education as a way to “advance God’s Kingdom” is well documented.

As Kristina Rizga reports for Mother Jones, the lengthy philanthropic record DeVos and her husband have amassed over many years shows “the couple’s clearest preference is for Christian private schools.”

CARE elementary certainly fits that profile. Students at CARE, according to the school’s handbook, “Attend weekly chapel, they are taught Christian principles with love and respect, and they are exposed to the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Prayer is part of the CARE experience.”

OK, I have to admit I am NOT unbiased on this. Growing up in the deep South, I was very aware of exactly WHY my relatives pulled their lily-white kids out of public schools, and WHY private Christian schools were created in the first place. You can't fool me on this one, because i HEARD the conversations. And yeah, sure, they dressed it up in different language in public, and with people "not their own" ... but everybody THERE ... understood.

There is nothing per se wrong with PRIVATE schools -- except funding them with PUBLIC money.

This racist message/policy has just been further sanitized by the Republicans/1% for their own ends via DeVos ...

http://www.alternet.org/education/betsy-devos-has-go-military-base-pitch-voucher-schools

[voteearlyvoteoften]

1. Disgusting

[maxrandb]

2. DOD Schools are some of the best

Does this mean that if I live close to a military installation, I can have the "choice" to send my kid to the Base DOD School?

[MedusaX]

3. Choice is fine as long as it is self-funded...

either by the student's family/support system
Or
By having all of the religious entities relinquish their current tax exempt status across all taxing jurisdictions...

Local State Federal
Property (Real & personal)
Income
Etc

I doubt that they would be very excited about being subject to the rules of the various tax programs...

Especially in a system whereby their tax dollars were used for public school children...

Yet, have the nerve to say that their schools should benefit from revenues generated by a program they do not pay into....
And at the expense of the educational institutions which are actually providing services to the families forced to pay taxes....

Of course...
these schools could always embrace their role as charitable servants and offer tuition-free education for all who desire to attend......