Betsy DeVos’s Education Choice And The “Free Lunch” Trap

“There is no such thing as a free lunch, but there is always free cheese in a mousetrap.”

The Real Story Behind Ole’ Betsy’s Twisted and Distorted CHOICE Trap.

Will American Parents Grab For the Bait?

March 11, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced at the Council for American Private Education (CAPE) State Directors Annual Meeting that the Department will no longer enforce a restriction barring religious organizations from serving as contract providers of equitable services solely due to their religious affiliation.

“She has also made clear that she believes that any education program funded with taxpayer dollars is “public,” even if it is a private religious school that accepts students funded with publicly funded vouchers or tax credit programs.” (Emp. added.) (Source:)

This is a huge disclosure from the feds because it explains exactly how federal fingerprints are attached to Choice.  Taxpayer dollars ARE PUBLIC.

In Betsy’s CHOICE, what does “ equitable services” mean and how can “taxpayer public dollars” be used? Public funds begets public oversight. What does it mean for private and religious schools to accept students with taxpayer publicly funded equitable services legislated in ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act? The section in ESSA is very clear if you read the legislation.

“The Department will continue to enforce all other applicable provisions of federal law. In particular, under ESEA Sections 1117(a)(2) and 8501(a)(2), school districts must continue to ensure that any contractor is independent of the private school for which it is providing services and that the educational services and other benefits being provided by the contractor are “secular, neutral and non-ideological.”

There are many moving parts to this suspicious free funding and free equitable services. It’s a trap.

First

Tax-Credit Scholarships identify your child as disadvantaged or Title I.

We are talking about Title I or funds that identify disadvantaged, underprivileged children. So, immediately your kid is identified as At-Risk.

Second

Your residence identifies your child in a Title I school-wide school.

Those Title I funds or tax-credit scholarship funds for At-Risk kids will be deposited into a parent’s ESA, EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNT.  Federal tax-credit funds for Title I children come directly from the parent and their ESA to the chosen private or religious school. (No supposed church/state violation.) The label, disadvantaged, underprivileged, or At-Risk, stays with your child because your residence is from the Title I school-wide school district. (See supplement not supplant in Title I below.)

Third

The scholarship identifies your CHOICE SCHOOL as receiver of a Title I child.

How will the private and religious school be monitored for accountability for equitable services? ESSA is very clear.  A private or religious school will be named with an overseer called an ombudsman. The ombudsman (let’s call it the “choice buddy system”- a partnership of parents, schools, and government holding hands) is the overseer of all private schools that accept Title I children which are funded by taxpayer public funds. Services must be equitable to children served in public schools. Enrolling tax-credit scholarship children means public services follow. This merges the Title I child with direct student services carried out by IDEA, Special Education.

Fourth

Title I  plus tax-credit public funds =  SERVICES for your child.

The term “direct student services” will follow the disadvantaged, At-Risk Title I child.  “Direct student services” are defined in ESSA as “meaningful choice” and “specialized individual support services.” Direct student services include the social and emotional screening, collection of personal data, and mental health intervention services which are already a mainstay in many public schools under the banner of safe schools or school climate. This system is directed through Title I and IDEA, Special Education. Your At-Risk CHOICE CHILD will be mandated to receive “equitable services” carried out by IDEA (Individual Disabilities Education Act, Special Ed) mandated by ESSA. It’s in the law. (See “The Real Definition of Title I and School-Wide” below.)

The quest is a trap to control all schools…public, charter, private, religious, and homeschooling. Choice is how it will be done.

The Real Definition of Title I and School-Wide.

DeVos continues to use the dropped poverty levels to use a SCHOOL-WIDE net called “exceptions” over an entire school that originated from the previous Obama administration disguised in the illegal ESEA Flex Waivers.

“A state or district does not need to comply with …. the 40% poverty rate to be eligible to operate a school wide program.” Poverty guidelines (free and reduced lunch percentages) were dropped to “0” so a federal blanket could be thrown over an entire school. Numbers MUST be manipulated to target EVERY child. School-wide meant that Title I programs could encompass the entire student body called whole school reform, not just poor children. Now, social and emotional behavioral programming will touch every child at school with the label called the “whole child” which means mind, body, spirit. Academics continue to dwindle. (See graph below of how the system is manipulated to access every child in the school in the Indiana exhibit.)

A “whole school” reform labels a school as school-wide and creates the level playing field for CHOICE for everyone. This means ALL CHILDREN in that school-wide school  are now identified as Title I, At-Risk, underprivileged, and disadvantaged. This means that any child’s parents in the entire school can receive those taxpayer funds or tax credit scholarships named as CHOICE dollars, even millionaires. However, no one talks about Title I school-wide as the vehicle to access EVERY child in the school. Nor do parents realize that equitable services means that your child must have the same services as the public school child. The deception and lies are like a maze which would be difficult for parents or even a President to decipher. This is the plan!

This CHOICE (all children who can receive tax-credit scholarships) creates a major exodus in the public school which was the real underlying Obama agenda and RINO Republicans to collapse your local governing bodies. Your neighborhood public school has a locally elected school board and is locally taxpayer funded. That will vanish under this system. This also creates a “per pupil expenditure” which means equal dollars -50/50 federal and state/local monies referred to as “supplement not supplant” are divided up for each child. Local neighborhood schools will be forced to shell up the 50% “supplement not supplant” agenda because of the distinction of where the child lives, his residence.  Let’s say it costs $12,000 to enroll in Immaculate Conception Catholic School per year. The scholarship is $6000. The neighborhood school of residence pays the other $6000. This becomes the vehicle for CHOICE DOLLARS “following the child” referred to as portability. Local schools and taxpayers have no idea how their rights, their voice, and their local treasury will be stolen from them and smeared across municipal and county lines. Your tax dollars just moved to the next school district next door or wherever.

This movement of scattering your local tax money means that eventually ALL SCHOOLS will become chartered under an ombudsman and regionalized because there is no way for accountability of your tax money. Private schools, religious schools and homeschools will become chartered under the government ombudsman overseer (choice buddy program) eventually.

Why is President Trump determined to redesign schools in the United States that have no local control? Has President Trump been briefed on the Obama set-up? There is no such thing as a parallel school system. The $5 billion for Choice/Tax Credit scholarships moves us closer to the ideal nationalized system of all schools becoming ALL federal “ombudsman”charter schools.

The Trick-Enforcement Mechanisms- Equitable Services

Mandated mental health/direct student services include these psychological conditioning services: Response to Intervention, RTI; Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, PBIS; Muti-Tiered System of Supports, MTSS; Universal Design For Learning, UDL; or SPECIALIZED INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT SERVICES, SISS.  These services will be forced on all private and religious schools who are also forced to accept the Title I child. (Private and religious schools must accept the Title I child because of Civil Rights Laws. Remember, the school accepts the child, not the scholarship. See the ballooning Civil Rights Department budget of $125 million expansion in preparation to file suit against any alleged violations by private and religious schools not wanting to accept federal tax-credit moneyed/children and federal ombudsman mandates.)

First, private schools must accept the children…then the “mandated equitable services.” Special Education cadres are teaching and coaching regular classroom teachers in mental health interventions called the trick-enforcement mechanisms. “Implementation science” means teaching with fidelity. Teachers must perform interventions like PBIS or resilience/grit (catch phrases) exactly as the programs have been developed. So much for teacher freedom to develop their talents and pursue their passions as DeVos has spouted about. It’s total control, not local control. Look out!

Local control MEANS LOCAL, NOT FEDERAL. It’s time to fire Secretary of Education DeVos!

The Exodus

Who is advising our President on education? 

Let’s look at the Trump budget.

Some advise that the budget is dead in the water. The President’s proposed budget plus  Tax-Credit Scholarships actually destroys public schools. Was this his choice? Or is there another agenda, or are there Obama holdovers in the department?

This final thread will eliminate your voice in how your taxes are spent. Elected school  boards will no longer be needed to oversee your taxes when your public school collapses under the weight of CHOICE funding for all Title I school-wide STUDENTS. Students will be able to take the federal scholarship or voucher combined with the local stipend to go to any school, sometimes even over state lines. Locally elected governing bodies disappear.

Kids will also have to take state tests or be monitored through state-tested standards embedded in computer software. Common Core and social and emotional learning is a contagious disease spreading to all private, religious, and home schools.  Now, that’s real freedom. It’s all about Title I portability, IDEA, Special Education services/interventions, ESA’s, and charter schools.

Your tax base must eventually be regionalized through a County Executive for this system of funding to work. Did you read that from Betsy? Senator Cruz (who wrote the Tax-Credit Scholarship bill) knows how this would work because he tried this agenda before with SB 306, and he’s doing it again. Those scholarships will be hard for parents to pass up when those dollars start to add up every year from $12,000 to $15,000 per student. But, everyone pays the price. Freedom is lost.

President Trump’s U.S. Department of Education’s budget proposal for fiscal 2020 budget cuts department spending from $7.1 billion down to $64 billion. Some of the “experimental” model programs appear to be eliminated. But, pay attention to the behavioral social and emotional programs that ADDS them back in through Title I and School Climate and Safety in the budget. It’s Title I and IDEA.

DeVos defines freedom which is the “free cheese in the mouse trap.” It’s all about free money with government strings attached;

“This budget at its core is about education freedom—freedom for America’s students to pursue their life-long learning journeys in the ways and places that work best for them, freedom for teachers to develop their talents and pursue their passions, and freedom from the top-down ‘Washington knows best’ approach that has proven ineffective and even harmful to students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in a statement about the budget proposal.”

This is top down federal control straight from Washington. Harmful? Yes. The Republic is shouting out to citizens. Stop this madness. Stop the Tax-Credit Scholarships. We know better.

Background On the Blaine Amendment.

DeVos says a ban on public money to be used at religious schools “should go to the ash heap of history.”

Why would DeVos say this? 37 states have a so-called Blaine Amendment that says it is in their state Constitution that prohibits public funds to be used for religious purposes.  This is the barrier for DeVos to totally achieve her objectives to completely destroy public schools and locally elected school boards to have control over their local tax base. Those states should prepare for battle. It’s time to fight Betsy, tooth and nail.

Betsy DeVos is no friend to America. #FireBetsy @realDonaldTrump.

© 2019 Anita Hoge – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Anita Hoge: hogieshack@comcast.net