National Public Education News

The biggest news today is the Supreme Court ruling that overturns the public unions' requirement that non-members pay a portion of fees for union services.  The issue was some public sector employees not wanting to support unions' political advocacy while the partial payment would ensure that they paid a little for the services they did access.  This affects teachers in Washington State, one of 22 states where "agency fees" are collected.
Here's a very good background piece from Education Next on what has happened in other states, including ones that are right-to-work states where there are no unions.

Many, if not most, of the analysts who follow education policy and organized labor believe that the ruling will result in decreased power for teachers unions. The logic behind this assumption is simple: teachers unions will lose dues revenue because membership will decrease and former agency-fee payers will cease paying fees for union services. With fewer resources, teachers unions will have less ability to exert their influence in local, state, and federal elections and at the bargaining table. Fewer members, less money, less power. Right?

Even so, a close look at Wisconsin and Michigan may provide important clues about the future of teachers unions in a post-Janus world.

As is fitting given this argument, we end by drawing on the voice of one teachers union leader in Michigan:

Right to work to me isn’t an issue, because I think people are still joining their unions. They believe in public education. They believe in democracy. They know it’s the right thing to do. Who else is our voice?

Who was behind the suit? The Waltons, the Koch Brothers, and the NRA's PAC.

Tweet from noted public ed blogger, Jersey Jazzman:

@DFER_News set the table for today, as did @FiftyCAN, @StudentsFirstNY, the charter industry, and a whole host of other “liberal” education “reformers.” Great job decimating the party you all claim to belong to, guys.

Speaking of bloggers, a prolific Japanese blogger was murdered minutes after he finished a lecture on internet trolls.   From the NY Times:

The killing highlighted the chilling possibility of digital threats spilling over into real life, in an era when internet users are increasingly concerned about the proliferation of misinformation, hate speech and even incitement to violence.

“The digital world is anonymous, and therefore it is easy for threats to get escalated there,” Yoh Mikami, a journalist who covers information technology, told Nishinihon Shimbun, a local newspaper. “Hatred toward people you wouldn’t meet in the real world heightens.”

I'm not worried about getting killed but that last point - about being able to say anything you want to someone you perceive you hate - is a problem.  It's one I try to curtail here because I want this to be about substance and not personality.  That said, I do track all the hate speech directed at me and I keep a file including who I think made the threat.  
From Ed Week on Congressional funding for public education:

The Senate bill funding the U.S. Department of Education for fiscal 2019 provides increases for disadvantaged students, special education programs, and a block grant supporting a diverse set of K-12 priorities.

It also maintains grants for educator development and after-school aid at current funding levels, and rejects a school choice initiative from the Trump administration. It's the second year in a row that both the Senate and House have nixed efforts by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to create new choice programs funded by the education department. 

More news on the Betsy DeVos front.

•  This headline says it all: Betsy DeVos is in Switzerland instead of at her School Safety Commission’s public listening session.  
  According to a release from her department, DeVos is on a “multi-stop learning tour” to Zurich, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom to learn about apprenticeship programs, among other things.  

“We don’t doubt the legitimacy of the trip to Europe,” said Bob Farrace, director of public affairs at the National Association of Secondary School Principals. “But it is odd, and perhaps a bit disrespectful, that the secretary would plan a public listening session on a day she knew she would be leaving the country. The absence of all four commissioners signals that this commission’s school safety work is simply not a priority for this administration.”

Keep in mind this "skills" tear that DeVos and others are on.  There seems to be a concerted push to get kids - as early as 3rd grade - to commit to a career and that career choice will guide their education.  Boo to that.

• The Chalkbeat blog had an interview with her husband, Dick DeVos.   What sets the documentary from HBO’s VICE series apart is the combative interview it features with DeVos’ husband, Dick DeVos, on the effects that charter schools have had on education in Michigan. “My hope is that the effect has been positive,” said DeVos, a businessman and philanthropist who was the state’s Republican nominee for governor in 2006. “The effect has been that traditional schools, having been confronted with an alternative that they were never confronted with before … [will] take a look at themselves and say, ‘How can we be special, too?’”
  
  Because only charter schools are special?

• The DeVos' have lost a lot of money in suspect ventures. 
  Theranos raised more than $600M from high profile investors, promising a new technology which would allow cheap and especially effective blood tests. But a Wall Street Journal investigation found the technology to be a fraud and the company is now in the process of shutting down.
  New court documents show that among the investors which lost their money are Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' family office, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, heirs of the Sam Walton Walmart fortune, and others. The DeVos family, which lost $100M in the investment, has told MarketWatch that "To say they’re highly disappointed in Theranos as a company and an investment is an understatement."
  
  As well there's this from the Washington Post:
  

I was checking out the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., branch of Neurocore, a “brain performance” company owned by the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. DeVos resigned her Neurocore board seat when she joined the Trump Cabinet, but she and her husband maintain a financial stake of between $5 million and $25 million, according to a financial disclosure statement filed with the Office of Government Ethics. The DeVoses’ private-equity firm, Windquest, identifies Neurocore as part of its “corporate family.” 

Her spokesman at the Department of Education did not respond to my requests for comment. But in January, Neurocore’s chief medical officer, Majid Fotuhi, asserted to the New York Times that “Betsy DeVos really believes in improving brain performance and helping children who have syndromes such as attention deficit disorder.”