dis muthafucka here lol
Are Black Voters Leaving Democrats Behind?
- Thread starter Maxxam
- Start date
Even if most of the people who were against the student loan debt were republicans, where's the democratic response... knowing full well students need help?
You think Dems didn't fight hard for Student loan relief? You're joking right?
Why? Why do you guys continue to fall victim to gaslighting?
If we don't defeat Putin, he'll take over Europe
If we don't help Israel, we'll have jihadist at OUR DOORSTEPS! They stabilize the region.
Then they'll send our kids over to fight those wars.
Black people fight in wars!
I think you need to take a civics class bro. Government has a duty.
Everything bad in this country right now is because of Trump and his mishandling of Covid. President Biden is just now fixing the economic crisis. Sinema and Manchin derailed the progress.
We need MORE DEMOCRATS elected!
I think we just need patience.
Biden deserves another 4 years to finish his promise to America.
The real question is, "Do you think that the Dems fought hard enough for loan relief?" If you do, then also you believe that we're under a two party system. You also believe that one of these bullshit political parties has your best interest at heart.
Whereas I think we're under a class system. The rich versus everyone else. I believe the vast majority of us are ignorant to that... but that's where the real fight is. I believe that these political parties don't give a shit about us. The only thing they care about is money and creating division. It works for them... and most of us have the illusion that it works for us as well.
It doesn't, though!
Can you outline exactly how they didn't fight hard enough for it? They aren't the majority of congress, and any exectuitve order by the President only lasts 2 years. As soon as it was proposed it was hit by a shit ton of federal lawsuits by Republican groups. Tell me exactly what Dems were supposed to do?
Be specific, not vague please.
Last edited:
@DC_Dude can probably answer this best.
The fact you think this tho after SCOTUS blocked relief and Biden has to keep finding workarounds means I can't taken you seriously either. I don't follow this closely and even I know how Biden did what he could to provide relief.
And stop letting Soul On Ice troll you. He is anti voting and anti dem.
Putin will take over Europe? You mean like Ceasar, and Nepoleon? Oh wait, The US put it's cape on and went over there and saved them. Oh, I forgot the US didn't have a cape then. The Europeans dealt with there own shit.
Jihadist at our doors? Oh, you mean the Klan? They've been at our fucking doors since white people came here.
They'll send our kids to fight those wars? Oh, so that's what you're afraid of. You won't fight your own battle, but you'll fight the government's battles and wars. Gotcha.
Government has a duty? A duty to do what? To govern it's citizens, and to keep us safe from crooked cops. Yeah, that's working (NOT).
If you believe that a single man can cause "ALL" of these issues that are going on now in this country... you're just not in the know. You said, Sinema and Manchin derailed the progress; and you want more democrats?
Patience??? Homey, Black people have shown more patience than Job. You want another four years of these MoFos?
DAMN!
Look Bro, I don't have all of the answers... I never said that I did. I pay my taxes to the government to work that shit out though, and they're failing in "my" opinion. If you feel that they are doing good for you, then great, wonderful.
I feel that they aren't doing enough for Americans, and especially for Black folk. Don't give my money away to foreign nations and then tell my Brothers whom are homeless, "Pull yourself up." Let those nations pull themselves up. Don't pretend that you don't see that people here are choosing between buying medicine and buying food.
Sounds like you're upset about something that never really happened. They fought quite hard for the college deductions they could get. Blame Republicans for haulting it. Lowering insulin? Dems pushed it and fought for it. Republicans blocked it. If you think both parties are the same, then you're not paying attention. Understanding how congress works is a good start to learn the difference.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion (especially if they're paying their taxes); which includes me.
Good day, Sir
So as someone who benefited from the student loan relief and know tons of other black folks who did, Fuck the Republicans when it comes to student loan debt. There is a whole thread that shows how the Dems helped with the relief and the thousands of stories where people have been forgiven. Since my loans were discharged, I've paid off all my debt and my credit score went from a 720 to damn near a 800.
I took out 120 K and when I get my loans discharged, it ballooned to 300K with interest.
Biden doesn't want to fight for 50,000 student loan relief. It's too hard
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/11/16/more-student-loan-borrowers-walk-away-from-their-debt-in-bankruptcy.html :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:
www.bgol.us
Yeah the Dems should do a better job of promoting their wins, but when Trump was in office, his Bitch Ass Bitch Betsy Devo wanted to turn all student loans into private loans and just slap a flat interest rate on them.
How Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Will Be Remembered
NOVEMBER 19, 20205:00 AM ETHEARD ON MORNING EDITION
Cory Turner
LISTEN· 3:513-Minute ListenPLAYLIST
- Download
- Embed
- Transcript
LA Johnson/NPR/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
What to make of the tenure of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos depends, like beauty itself, on the eye of the beholder.
To the president who asked her to run the Department of Education, she was a loyal lieutenant who argued for her department's irrelevance in a nation where control of schools is a local affair — that is, until she argued the opposite, at the president's urging, and threatened schools with a loss of federal funding if they refused to reopen mid-pandemic.
To Christian conservatives, she was a hero who once proclaimed, "I fight against anyone who would have government be the parent to everyone." DeVos used her bully pulpit to champion religious education, push for school choice and help private schools in financial turmoil.
Sponsor Message
To her critics, including the nation's teachers unions, she was a stone-cold villain who famously suggested guns belong in some schools (to fend off bears), who needed the vice president's vote to survive confirmation and who spent four years disparaging American public education.
Whatever view you take of DeVos, here's a look back at the facts of her achievements and how likely they are to survive the next secretary.
Scuttling Obama-era guidance
One of the easiest ways an administration can undo the work of its political predecessor is to rollback what is called "guidance," and DeVos wasted little time helping to reverse Obama-era guidance protecting transgender students.
In May 2016, the Obama Justice and Education departments sent a letter to school districts, advising them that students should be allowed to use facilities, including bathrooms, that are consistent with their gender identity. But in February 2017, DeVos helped rescind that guidance. Doing so sent a message to school leaders that her department would be enforcing a much narrower view of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Student advocates and civil rights groups excoriated DeVos for the move. Looking back, Liz King of the liberal-leaning Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights describes the rollback as "heartless, cruel, reckless and irresponsible."
EDUCATION
DeVos To Rescind Obama-Era Guidance On School Discipline
In late 2018, DeVos made a similar move, dropping guidance that was meant to protect students of color from what the Obama administration called "discriminatory discipline." The 2014 guidance had encouraged schools to use alternatives to suspension and expulsion and came with a threat: If a school district's discipline patterns revealed significant racial disparities, it could face a federal civil rights investigation.To justify rescinding the discipline guidance, DeVos' department used an argument she would often repeat: that states and local districts should make education policy, not the U.S. government. Or, as she said in October 2019, "government has never made anything better or cheaper, more effective or more efficient. And nowhere is that more true than in education."
Sponsor Message
Even when it came to budgeting for her agency, DeVos was ideologically consistent. She argued for less money from Congress, massive cuts in federal education spending and consolidating the programs that would remain (requests lawmakers repeatedly rebuffed).
The secretary talked often about what she perceived as the failures of America's public education system and, instead, touted controversial and unproven alternatives, such as distributing school funds to families, to spend where they like. "Instead of holding fast to what we know does not work," DeVos told lawmakers earlier this year, "let me suggest we find the courage to do something bold and begin a new era of student growth and achievement."
While this kind of bold talk proved popular with many of the president's supporters, her early moves made for a quicksand legacy — because just as DeVos could easily abandon guidance from a previous administration, so too can the next education secretary undo her work here.
"I think, within a year, we're going to look back, and there's not going to be much of a mark," says Michael Petrilli, head of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.
And in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike never shared DeVos' vision for a diminished department, ignoring those stripped-down budget proposals, year after year.
New sexual assault regulations
DeVos made a more lasting impact on how schools must respond to incidents of sexual assault and harassment by writing new regulations around Title IX "aimed at beefing up protections for accused college students," as NPR's Tovia Smith wrote earlier this year.
EDUCATION
Federal Rules Give More Protection To Students Accused Of Sexual Assault
These new regulations allow the representative of a student accused of sexual assault to cross-examine his accuser in real time, raising concerns from survivor advocates that victims would be more reluctant to come forward. The department also limited the definition of sexual harassment to behavior that is "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.""It communicated to survivors that they should not expect to be believed," King says.
Unlike guidance changes, the rigorous process of writing new rules, as well as opening them to public comment, would make it difficult for a Biden administration to scrap them quickly.
Sponsor Message
"DeVos went through the full rule-making process. They spent a couple of years. They dotted all the i's, crossed all the t's," says Rick Hess, who directs education policy at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. "They came up with a Title IX playbook, which strikes me as both fair-minded and reasonable," and for that, Hess argues, "[DeVos] deserves credit that nobody's likely to give her."
Borrower Defense
When the Obama administration cracked down on Corinthian Colleges and other predatory, for-profit schools that defrauded students, it also rewrote an old rule, known as Borrower Defense to Repayment, to help these student borrowers shed their unfair debts and start over.
Under DeVos, though, the Education Department did the administrative equivalent of throwing sand in the gears of Borrower Defense. It stopped reviewing cases for months, allowing the complaints of hundreds of thousands of students to pile up, then began the arduous process of rewriting the rule yet again. At the same time, the department refused to release legal reviews written by the Obama administration that justified sweeping debt forgiveness.
EDUCATION
Betsy DeVos And The High-Stakes Standoff Over Student Loan Forgiveness
"While students should have protections from predatory practices, schools and taxpayers should also be treated fairly," DeVos said in a 2017 speech. "Under the previous rules, all one had to do was raise his or her hands to be entitled to so-called free money."Under DeVos, the latest rewrite of Borrower Defense requires borrowers to meet a much higher standard before they can have their loans erased. Most notably, they not only have to prove they were misled by a school but also provide evidence of the school's intent to mislead them. In fact, this new rule was considered so extreme that a bipartisan Congress voted to block it, forcing President Trump to use a rare veto.
"The Department of Education under Secretary DeVos has gone above and beyond to deny relief to borrowers cheated by for-profit colleges," says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending and an attorney who continues to fight DeVos' moves in court. "Instead of getting the fresh start they were entitled to, former Corinthian students became political footballs in this administration, as did Borrower Defense rights as a whole."
Sponsor Message
Merrill says the DeVos rule will be difficult for a Biden administration to scrap without again going through an arduous rule-making process. That said, the rule is currently at the center of a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, where a judge could order a return to the Obama-era rule.
School choice
On no other issue has DeVos been more consistent, or more consistently outspoken, than on her desire to expand school choice via charter schools and private school vouchers. In a statement to NPR, DeVos' press secretary, Angela Morabito, says that "school choice is on the march across the country, and Secretary DeVos will be remembered for leading the charge for every student's right to seek out their best educational fit."
Lead the charge, she did. But for all her efforts, DeVos has little to show for it. The department's 2018 budget proposal, for example, would have set aside more than $400 million to expand charter schools and private school vouchers, but Congress nixed the idea. School choice advocates believed Trump's overhaul of the tax code would be the perfect opportunity to implement an ambitious voucher program, but that too never materialized.
When Congress agreed to send K-12 schools more than $13 billion to cover costs related to COVID-19, DeVos angered even some Republicans by insisting that public schools should have to use more of that money to pay for services, such as tutoring and transportation, for private school students. Congress had agreed that services should be based on a private school's share of low-income students; DeVos argued they should be based on schools' overall share of students.
CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES
DeVos Loses Latest Fight Over Rerouting Aid To Private School Students
This fight captures DeVos' determination to use federal power to legitimize and nurture alternatives to public education, but, as was often the case, her efforts failed. In September, a federal judge determined that the department had not only "acted beyond its authority" but misinterpreted the will of Congress, and DeVos later dropped the fight.When asked to name DeVos' lasting achievements, Morabito tops the list with Education Freedom Scholarships, calling the proposed voucher program "the most transformative K-12 policy in our nation's history." It would have provided up to $5 billion a year for children to attend the school of their choice, including nonpublic and religious schools. While the bill has more than 120 co-sponsors in Congress, it doesn't have the kind of broad support it needs to pass. And so this "most transformative K-12 policy in our nation's history" remains an airplane without wings.
Sponsor Message
In fact, Petrilli says, DeVos has been something of a drag on the school choice movement. "Charter schools used to have strong bipartisan support," Petrilli says, but DeVos and Trump have been such polarizing figures that many Democrats abandoned the cause. "Now, Joe Biden has come in with the most anti-charter school platform since charter schools were invented 25 years ago. And I think that some of that has to be laid at the feet of Betsy DeVos."
It's clear from the department's own language, about school choice "on the march" and DeVos "leading the charge," that this secretary tore into the debate looking for combat, not compromise. As a result: School choice may soon be in retreat.
Teacher strikes
In early 2018, teachers in West Virginia and Arizona did something rare for educators: They walked off the job to protest low pay and underfunded schools. These demonstrations caught on with teachers in other states, too, creating a national "Red for Ed" movement.
NPR ED
Teacher Walkouts: A State By State Guide
While DeVos had done little formal policymaking to earn the ire of teachers nationwide, her criticism of public schools and teachers unions, as well as her eagerness to boost charter, private and religious schools, made her an easy target and a powerful rallying cry for teachers who felt overworked and underappreciated.Becky Pringle, the head of the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, or NEA, remembers attending protests where "at least 50% of the signs had Betsy DeVos' name on them, demanding her removal."
In the middle of this protest movement, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that limited unions' ability to collect fees — a move that many believed would imperil unions financially. But the decision, coupled with DeVos' knack for angering teachers, instead energized educators and their unions — an energy that Biden's campaign harnessed.
TEACH Grant
At roughly the same time educators were taking to the streets, NPR reported that a grant program, meant to pay the college bills of new teachers who promise to work in high-need schools, was instead unfairly saddling those teachers with debts because of small paperwork mistakes. The TEACH Grant program had become a trap.
NPR ED
Dept. Of Education Fail: Teachers Lose Grants, Forced To Repay Thousands In Loans
But in one of the more surprising moves of DeVos' tenure, the Education Department sided with teachers and not only worked to improve the program, but officially apologized for its failings (even though they were not the fault of the Trump administration) and created a path to make things right, ultimately helping more than 6,500 teachers shed their debts.Coronavirus
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most disruptive events in the history of U.S. education. Even now, many students haven't seen the inside of a school building since March. Districts far and wide have been hit with crushing new costs at the same time the pandemic has hammered state education budgets. Aside from distributing the more than $13 billion Congress set aside for K-12 schools in the CARES Act, DeVos has been largely passive on the matter of helping schools further weather the pandemic's financial toll — which dozens of education organizations estimated in May would take at least another $175 billion.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATES
America's School Funding Crisis: Budget Cuts, Rising Costs And No Help In Sight
THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
White House Stumbles Over How Best To Reopen Schools As Trump Blasts CDC Guidance
In the early days of the pandemic, DeVos did waive federal testing requirements for K-12 schools and worked with Congress to suspend payments on federal student loans and temporarily drop interest rates to 0%. But she has since sidestepped calls from states and school leaders to provide science-driven guidance, alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to help determine safety thresholds for closing and reopening schools. She also parried calls to track school-based infections.The secretary's most forceful pandemic moment came in July when she stood alongside Trump in arguing that schools should reopen in the fall, regardless of their ability to meet CDC safety recommendations. It was a striking pivot for a secretary who had repeatedly cited local control of schools to argue against action at the federal level. At a roundtable with DeVos, Trump threatened that his administration would even "put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools," including saying (erroneously) that he could cut off federal school funds.
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Household name
Where does all of this leave DeVos' legacy as education secretary?
Practically speaking, much of the work she did was in undoing, and can similarly be undone.
For the cause she most often championed, that of expanding families' access to charter and private schools, she made little progress — and may have been counterproductive, scaring away sympathetic Democrats who didn't dare align with one of their party's favorite villains.
Perhaps her most remarkable achievement wasn't in the realm of policy at all, but in the fact that she became a household name — as a Cabinet secretary — and brought a white-hot spotlight to the debate about how America should educate its children.
"I don't think there is another secretary of education who is better known than her throughout our history," the NEA's Pringle says.
If you listen to Urban View on XM Radio, Karen Hunter is probably the most well known radio host. She posted this the other day on twitter.
If you need even more proof, I recommend you check out these redditt groups...
Well, not paying attention and just spouting off misinformation is how they get you to not vote. You're hanging on your "feelings" vs. actually facts. But it's all good. Do you.
Trump will enjoy your contribution to his campaign I'm sure.
I'm not trolling .
You've guys have convinced me. It took some years, but it's finally gotten through.
I'm rolling with Roland!
At the end of the day, the democrats are the only thing keeping Black people out of chains.
#ivesawthelights
#changedman
So as someone who benefited from the student loan relief and know tons of other black folks who did, Fuck the Republicans when it comes to student loan debt. There is a whole thread that shows how the Dems helped with the relief and the thousands of stories where people have been forgiven. Since my loans were discharged, I've paid off all my debt and my credit score went from a 720 to damn near a 800.
I took out 120 K and when I get my loans discharged, it ballooned to 300K with interest.
Biden doesn't want to fight for 50,000 student loan relief. It's too hard
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/11/16/more-student-loan-borrowers-walk-away-from-their-debt-in-bankruptcy.html :bravo: :bravo: :bravo:www.bgol.us
Yeah the Dems should do a better job of promoting their wins, but when Trump was in office, his Bitch Ass Bitch Betsy Devo wanted to turn all student loans into private loans and just slap a flat interest rate on them.
How Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Will Be Remembered
NOVEMBER 19, 20205:00 AM ET
HEARD ON MORNING EDITION
Cory Turner
LISTEN· 3:513-Minute ListenPLAYLIST
- Download
- Embed
- Transcript
LA Johnson/NPR/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
What to make of the tenure of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos depends, like beauty itself, on the eye of the beholder.
To the president who asked her to run the Department of Education, she was a loyal lieutenant who argued for her department's irrelevance in a nation where control of schools is a local affair — that is, until she argued the opposite, at the president's urging, and threatened schools with a loss of federal funding if they refused to reopen mid-pandemic.
To Christian conservatives, she was a hero who once proclaimed, "I fight against anyone who would have government be the parent to everyone." DeVos used her bully pulpit to champion religious education, push for school choice and help private schools in financial turmoil.
Sponsor Message
To her critics, including the nation's teachers unions, she was a stone-cold villain who famously suggested guns belong in some schools (to fend off bears), who needed the vice president's vote to survive confirmation and who spent four years disparaging American public education.
Whatever view you take of DeVos, here's a look back at the facts of her achievements and how likely they are to survive the next secretary.
Scuttling Obama-era guidance
One of the easiest ways an administration can undo the work of its political predecessor is to rollback what is called "guidance," and DeVos wasted little time helping to reverse Obama-era guidance protecting transgender students.
In May 2016, the Obama Justice and Education departments sent a letter to school districts, advising them that students should be allowed to use facilities, including bathrooms, that are consistent with their gender identity. But in February 2017, DeVos helped rescind that guidance. Doing so sent a message to school leaders that her department would be enforcing a much narrower view of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Student advocates and civil rights groups excoriated DeVos for the move. Looking back, Liz King of the liberal-leaning Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights describes the rollback as "heartless, cruel, reckless and irresponsible."
EDUCATION
DeVos To Rescind Obama-Era Guidance On School Discipline
In late 2018, DeVos made a similar move, dropping guidance that was meant to protect students of color from what the Obama administration called "discriminatory discipline." The 2014 guidance had encouraged schools to use alternatives to suspension and expulsion and came with a threat: If a school district's discipline patterns revealed significant racial disparities, it could face a federal civil rights investigation.
To justify rescinding the discipline guidance, DeVos' department used an argument she would often repeat: that states and local districts should make education policy, not the U.S. government. Or, as she said in October 2019, "government has never made anything better or cheaper, more effective or more efficient. And nowhere is that more true than in education."
Sponsor Message
Even when it came to budgeting for her agency, DeVos was ideologically consistent. She argued for less money from Congress, massive cuts in federal education spending and consolidating the programs that would remain (requests lawmakers repeatedly rebuffed).
The secretary talked often about what she perceived as the failures of America's public education system and, instead, touted controversial and unproven alternatives, such as distributing school funds to families, to spend where they like. "Instead of holding fast to what we know does not work," DeVos told lawmakers earlier this year, "let me suggest we find the courage to do something bold and begin a new era of student growth and achievement."
While this kind of bold talk proved popular with many of the president's supporters, her early moves made for a quicksand legacy — because just as DeVos could easily abandon guidance from a previous administration, so too can the next education secretary undo her work here.
"I think, within a year, we're going to look back, and there's not going to be much of a mark," says Michael Petrilli, head of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.
And in Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike never shared DeVos' vision for a diminished department, ignoring those stripped-down budget proposals, year after year.
New sexual assault regulations
DeVos made a more lasting impact on how schools must respond to incidents of sexual assault and harassment by writing new regulations around Title IX "aimed at beefing up protections for accused college students," as NPR's Tovia Smith wrote earlier this year.
EDUCATION
Federal Rules Give More Protection To Students Accused Of Sexual Assault
These new regulations allow the representative of a student accused of sexual assault to cross-examine his accuser in real time, raising concerns from survivor advocates that victims would be more reluctant to come forward. The department also limited the definition of sexual harassment to behavior that is "severe, pervasive and objectively offensive."
"It communicated to survivors that they should not expect to be believed," King says.
Unlike guidance changes, the rigorous process of writing new rules, as well as opening them to public comment, would make it difficult for a Biden administration to scrap them quickly.
Sponsor Message
"DeVos went through the full rule-making process. They spent a couple of years. They dotted all the i's, crossed all the t's," says Rick Hess, who directs education policy at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. "They came up with a Title IX playbook, which strikes me as both fair-minded and reasonable," and for that, Hess argues, "[DeVos] deserves credit that nobody's likely to give her."
Borrower Defense
When the Obama administration cracked down on Corinthian Colleges and other predatory, for-profit schools that defrauded students, it also rewrote an old rule, known as Borrower Defense to Repayment, to help these student borrowers shed their unfair debts and start over.
Under DeVos, though, the Education Department did the administrative equivalent of throwing sand in the gears of Borrower Defense. It stopped reviewing cases for months, allowing the complaints of hundreds of thousands of students to pile up, then began the arduous process of rewriting the rule yet again. At the same time, the department refused to release legal reviews written by the Obama administration that justified sweeping debt forgiveness.
EDUCATION
Betsy DeVos And The High-Stakes Standoff Over Student Loan Forgiveness
"While students should have protections from predatory practices, schools and taxpayers should also be treated fairly," DeVos said in a 2017 speech. "Under the previous rules, all one had to do was raise his or her hands to be entitled to so-called free money."
Under DeVos, the latest rewrite of Borrower Defense requires borrowers to meet a much higher standard before they can have their loans erased. Most notably, they not only have to prove they were misled by a school but also provide evidence of the school's intent to mislead them. In fact, this new rule was considered so extreme that a bipartisan Congress voted to block it, forcing President Trump to use a rare veto.
"The Department of Education under Secretary DeVos has gone above and beyond to deny relief to borrowers cheated by for-profit colleges," says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending and an attorney who continues to fight DeVos' moves in court. "Instead of getting the fresh start they were entitled to, former Corinthian students became political footballs in this administration, as did Borrower Defense rights as a whole."
Sponsor Message
Merrill says the DeVos rule will be difficult for a Biden administration to scrap without again going through an arduous rule-making process. That said, the rule is currently at the center of a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York, where a judge could order a return to the Obama-era rule.
School choice
On no other issue has DeVos been more consistent, or more consistently outspoken, than on her desire to expand school choice via charter schools and private school vouchers. In a statement to NPR, DeVos' press secretary, Angela Morabito, says that "school choice is on the march across the country, and Secretary DeVos will be remembered for leading the charge for every student's right to seek out their best educational fit."
Lead the charge, she did. But for all her efforts, DeVos has little to show for it. The department's 2018 budget proposal, for example, would have set aside more than $400 million to expand charter schools and private school vouchers, but Congress nixed the idea. School choice advocates believed Trump's overhaul of the tax code would be the perfect opportunity to implement an ambitious voucher program, but that too never materialized.
When Congress agreed to send K-12 schools more than $13 billion to cover costs related to COVID-19, DeVos angered even some Republicans by insisting that public schools should have to use more of that money to pay for services, such as tutoring and transportation, for private school students. Congress had agreed that services should be based on a private school's share of low-income students; DeVos argued they should be based on schools' overall share of students.
CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES
DeVos Loses Latest Fight Over Rerouting Aid To Private School Students
This fight captures DeVos' determination to use federal power to legitimize and nurture alternatives to public education, but, as was often the case, her efforts failed. In September, a federal judge determined that the department had not only "acted beyond its authority" but misinterpreted the will of Congress, and DeVos later dropped the fight.
When asked to name DeVos' lasting achievements, Morabito tops the list with Education Freedom Scholarships, calling the proposed voucher program "the most transformative K-12 policy in our nation's history." It would have provided up to $5 billion a year for children to attend the school of their choice, including nonpublic and religious schools. While the bill has more than 120 co-sponsors in Congress, it doesn't have the kind of broad support it needs to pass. And so this "most transformative K-12 policy in our nation's history" remains an airplane without wings.
Sponsor Message
In fact, Petrilli says, DeVos has been something of a drag on the school choice movement. "Charter schools used to have strong bipartisan support," Petrilli says, but DeVos and Trump have been such polarizing figures that many Democrats abandoned the cause. "Now, Joe Biden has come in with the most anti-charter school platform since charter schools were invented 25 years ago. And I think that some of that has to be laid at the feet of Betsy DeVos."
It's clear from the department's own language, about school choice "on the march" and DeVos "leading the charge," that this secretary tore into the debate looking for combat, not compromise. As a result: School choice may soon be in retreat.
Teacher strikes
In early 2018, teachers in West Virginia and Arizona did something rare for educators: They walked off the job to protest low pay and underfunded schools. These demonstrations caught on with teachers in other states, too, creating a national "Red for Ed" movement.
NPR ED
Teacher Walkouts: A State By State Guide
While DeVos had done little formal policymaking to earn the ire of teachers nationwide, her criticism of public schools and teachers unions, as well as her eagerness to boost charter, private and religious schools, made her an easy target and a powerful rallying cry for teachers who felt overworked and underappreciated.
Becky Pringle, the head of the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, or NEA, remembers attending protests where "at least 50% of the signs had Betsy DeVos' name on them, demanding her removal."
In the middle of this protest movement, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that limited unions' ability to collect fees — a move that many believed would imperil unions financially. But the decision, coupled with DeVos' knack for angering teachers, instead energized educators and their unions — an energy that Biden's campaign harnessed.
TEACH Grant
At roughly the same time educators were taking to the streets, NPR reported that a grant program, meant to pay the college bills of new teachers who promise to work in high-need schools, was instead unfairly saddling those teachers with debts because of small paperwork mistakes. The TEACH Grant program had become a trap.
NPR ED
Dept. Of Education Fail: Teachers Lose Grants, Forced To Repay Thousands In Loans
But in one of the more surprising moves of DeVos' tenure, the Education Department sided with teachers and not only worked to improve the program, but officially apologized for its failings (even though they were not the fault of the Trump administration) and created a path to make things right, ultimately helping more than 6,500 teachers shed their debts.
Coronavirus
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most disruptive events in the history of U.S. education. Even now, many students haven't seen the inside of a school building since March. Districts far and wide have been hit with crushing new costs at the same time the pandemic has hammered state education budgets. Aside from distributing the more than $13 billion Congress set aside for K-12 schools in the CARES Act, DeVos has been largely passive on the matter of helping schools further weather the pandemic's financial toll — which dozens of education organizations estimated in May would take at least another $175 billion.
CORONAVIRUS UPDATES
America's School Funding Crisis: Budget Cuts, Rising Costs And No Help In Sight
THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
White House Stumbles Over How Best To Reopen Schools As Trump Blasts CDC Guidance
In the early days of the pandemic, DeVos did waive federal testing requirements for K-12 schools and worked with Congress to suspend payments on federal student loans and temporarily drop interest rates to 0%. But she has since sidestepped calls from states and school leaders to provide science-driven guidance, alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to help determine safety thresholds for closing and reopening schools. She also parried calls to track school-based infections.
The secretary's most forceful pandemic moment came in July when she stood alongside Trump in arguing that schools should reopen in the fall, regardless of their ability to meet CDC safety recommendations. It was a striking pivot for a secretary who had repeatedly cited local control of schools to argue against action at the federal level. At a roundtable with DeVos, Trump threatened that his administration would even "put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools," including saying (erroneously) that he could cut off federal school funds.
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Where does all of this leave DeVos' legacy as education secretary?
Practically speaking, much of the work she did was in undoing, and can similarly be undone.
For the cause she most often championed, that of expanding families' access to charter and private schools, she made little progress — and may have been counterproductive, scaring away sympathetic Democrats who didn't dare align with one of their party's favorite villains.
Perhaps her most remarkable achievement wasn't in the realm of policy at all, but in the fact that she became a household name — as a Cabinet secretary — and brought a white-hot spotlight to the debate about how America should educate its children.
"I don't think there is another secretary of education who is better known than her throughout our history," the NEA's Pringle says.
If you listen to Urban View on XM Radio, Karen Hunter is probably the most well known radio host. She posted this the other day on twitter.
If you need even more proof, I recommend you check out these redditt groups...
So much winning
Gonna copy and paste this OUTSTANDING information to all these pro blacks asking for shit!
Well, I'll say this: Trump will not get my support, neither will Biden.
Indirectly he will. I don't love Biden, he's just the tool I'm using to keep Maga away from the seat
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Without power you can't appeal for it, take it, or negotiate it. And we don't have power. And you do need to vote to "hold the dam" while you do what's necessary to get power.
that makes absolutely no sense. hold the dam is what we've been doing for 70 years with no real progress. that doesn't do anything.
we do have power to negotiate. if someone needs you to get something and you don't give them assistance, then that's power. just like a union. If no blacks voted next election, that's fucking power. if all black nba players said fuck you, we going overseas, that's power.
my goodness. stop being so cowardly minded and making excuses to give liberal whites their agenda while they are shitting in your hands.
A lot of you don't realize how much dems need your vote and don't use it to your advantage. they've been playing games with you and you fall for it all the time.
if all black people stopped working and spent nothing for a month on a business, this entire economy would collapse.
and you said we got no power.
hes being sarcastic bro
if your vote is from a place of fear, you aren't voting right.
give me this , this, this. no? fuck you. i'll wait.
watch how quickly they come back.
I can sell this ninja a ford taurus for $80,000 and just tell him that you don't want those thugs on the bus to rob you.
Anything can be framed as fear. If you exercise and eat right, is it because you're wanting to be your best self or you're afraid of being sick and fat? Likewise, I want the best outcome. Reproductive healthcare, living wages, action on climate, policies that support families, etc. Those are the things I want and support. Why would I let someone get elected who has said they are against all those things?
I've already said in multiple posts that Democratic policies have worked wonderfully for me, and I've greatly benefitted from them.
Your "ask" isn't "my ask".
I lost hella people under Trump due to the beetus.
Biden out here saving LIVES bro!
That $35 means my meemaw can keep her foots!
He didn't say that he was only holding the dam though.
He wants to hold the dam AND push the dam further back.
You want to let the dam go, let all the progress we've made roll back and then negotiate.
This is too absurd to reply to.
Rising tide sis
Republicans want us to sank
Today's Republican's want power for the wealthy that aligns with their religious ideals. They see their wealth as proof they have God's favor. Many aren't just white nationalists, they are Christian white nationalists trying to bring to pass the end times. They never accepted black people as full fledged Americans, but today's racism is a mix of white supremacy + whatever they need to say and do to appeal to white supremacists to gain and maintain power. You're hopping around and joking around, but there are SEVERAL organized groups on the right, and little if any of the stuff they propose benefits average white Americans in general, let alone Black Americans. I would have died had it not been for the ACA. You're young and so things seem simple and uncomplicated now. Hopefully you gain wisdom with age. Until then, listen to the stories of Elders pre-civil rights. They are still here among us.
I'm a changed man now sis.
Y'all make too much sense for me not to listen.
I thank you and brother @Drayonis for enlightening me and having PATIENCE all of these years.
I may be 1st person in the history of BGOL to have had his mind changed.
PS how do i get one of those lovely Biden 2024 signs for my front yard?
#allIn
#MightyJoeinTwentyFo
Yass sis!
voting should be done to get what you want, not fear of taken something away
good for you.