Here's How Secretary of Education, DeVos will Destroy Special Needs Programs

One of Betsy DeVos' favorite programs makes special-needs kids give up federal benefits

·         Writer: Chris Weller

School-voucher programs — systems in which public funds are diverted to help kids attend private schools — are contentious for a number of reasons.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been a vocal advocate for voucher programs, but critics say they can drain funds from public schools, increase rates of segregation, and, according to some research, offer few actual benefits to the students who use them.

For parents, vouchers create a more immediate dilemma: In many states, special-needs kids who use vouchers must surrender the federal protections afforded to them by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

These benefits include certain legal protections if a child acts out in school, a guarantee to receive an education on par with a public-school student, and protections regarding the teacher's qualifications.

It's a paradox that often eliminates the desire to use the voucher, and one that sees many students returning to public school within a few years, according to the New York Times.

"The private schools are not breaking the law," special-education lawyer Julie Weatherly told the Times. In several states, including Colorado, Arizona, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, private schools are free to make it a condition of attending the school that parents and kids must waive their federal rights.

In other states, schools are free to decide for themselves, as the law makes no mention one way or another.

Secretary DeVos has held up school vouchers as an example of "school choice," or the ability for parents to pluck their kids from a public school and drop them in a private or home school. On several occasions, she has compared the value of picking schools in a free market to the luxury of choosing Uber or Lyft over a taxi.

The laws regarding special-needs vouchers may signal a roadblock in making education more like a private good.

In Wisconsin, for example, these vouchers cost public school districts $2.4 million in state aid. The money helped fund 202 students with disabilities to attend private schools. Critics of the Wisconsin voucher program, such as the family coalition Stop Special Needs Vouchers, arguethe laws leave private schools free to ignore IDEA's protections, which makes voucher programs less effective yet still costly to taxpayers and possibly detrimental to public schools.

Proponents of vouchers make similar arguments as DeVos and President Trump. In the most conventional view, vouchers give parents the freedom to place their children where they'll learn best. Advocates say the long-term effect is a system in which kids are sorted more effectively, with fewer wasted costs.

Mark Dynarski, an education researcher and voucher expert, says vouchers are still a fairly minor force in American education. On a yearly basis, waves of kids move in and out of a given public school due to changes of address — and they do so at rates far exceeding those of vouchers.

"Given the kinds of waves happening inside schools," Dynarski recently told Business Insider, "it's hard to see how vouchers actually cause the school to stop what they're doing and say, 'We need a plan to respond.'"

What’s a Federal Benefit Payment? Are you getting one?

This was sent to me and I just had to share!

  
What’s a Federal Benefit Payment?  Are you getting one?

The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a *Federal Benefit Payment*?  I'll be part of the one percent to forward this.  I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you.  I intend to keep passing it on in hopes everyone in our country will read it.

The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment."   This isn't a benefit.  It is our money paid out of our earned income!  Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too.  It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.

If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.

If you calculate the future value of your monthly invest-ment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved!

This is your personal investment.  Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.

That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it’s a fact).

And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.

Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger *Ponzi scheme* than Bernie Madoff ever did.

They took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking.  They didn't have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them.  And they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed.  And recently they've told us that the money won't support us for very much longer.  (Isn't it funny that they NEVER say this about welfare payments?)

But is it our fault they misused our investments?  And now, to add insult to injury, they're calling it a *benefit*, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.

Just because they borrowed the money doesn't mean that our investments were a charity!

Let's take a stand.  We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare.  Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.

Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.

Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.

99% of people won't forward this.  Will you?

You can bet I WILL!!!