A voucher by any other name

 ...still doesn't smell sweet, with all apologies to Shakespeare.

You may have noticed a recent flood of reporting around the--let's call them what they are!--vouchers that are a creation of the OB3 bill. This is due to Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Kevin Salinger having delivered remarks in a closed-door session earlier this week which were subsequently released. The provision of the bill goes into effect in January; guidance was expected, well, now, but now we are told is coming the end of September. I think that this this summary from Education Counsel out of D.C., is also useful, as is this resource guide from In the Public Interest.

You might remember that this is a pass through: those able can donate to an organization that then provides scholarships from those funds to those eligible, in any state in which the governor has opted into the program, who are from a household with income no greater than 300% of the area’s median gross income. The voucher piece of this is a redirection of what would be federal tax dollars instead to, through the pass-through, private education; per K-12 Dive: 

Starting in 2027, taxpayers will be able to donate up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting 501(c)(3) organization. They then would be eligible for a 100% federal income tax credit for their contributions.

You get a federal tax break if you do this. 

You might remember from the write-up I did of the first round of the Massachusetts push about this the rosy picture of what this can be spent on doesn't bear out. Josh Cowen, whose work on vouchers I appreciate a great deal, came out with what I'd characterize as a "get that money" post this week. As he outlines: 

Yes. Even under the most narrow interpretation of the law, school districts can provide services that students may purchase in addition to their state-funded base funding that comes with enrollment.

The key words there are "may purchase." This is not funding that flows to schools from the public education they, by law, already provide. This for additional programs that families can CHOOSE TO BUY from the school district, that the district creates (or I suppose already has, if a school already charges for some sort of bonus services). The problem, and I again think Peter Greene has outlined this well, is that this has nothing to do with the provision of public education to all students: 

...schools could be explicitly offering a Basic Minimum track. That Basic Minimum could be funded by local taxpayers, and everything offered in the Premium track would be funded with federal dollars, leaving the “extra” offerings at the mercy of donor generosity and federal rule-making. Instead of moving closer to fully funding public schools, federal vouchers will provide excuses to fund them less.

Again, these are not dollars that are going to flow into public schools to "support" programs we already are required to have. The only way this will go to public schools is if they are for shiny special programs that cost more and are outside of the requirements of the school. Anyone who argues otherwise hasn't done the reading. 

Cowen's main point (I think it is fair to say) is that these dollars are going to be coming from every state, and so every state should be sure that they can also receive them. I will say that this "money only flows out" argument doesn't hold a lot of water with me, as I am familiar with the way the federal revenue and expenses work with relationship to my state. 

I also don't buy the idea--agreeing with Joshua Weishart, who outlines it well in this thread--that there isn't a real cost to public education in this system. First, we have ongoing concerns over if federal education funding is going to continue and continue to serve those most in need. I do think this gives fodder to those looking for cuts, if what they see are 50 states opting into systems that remove dollars from federal public coffers and redirect them to private (or privately directed) education. We don't need Title I any more then, right? Or IDEA?

There is a basic question here: Do we believe in public education of all at the public expense or not? It thus isn't entirely a surprise at who we see, even here in Massachusetts, coming out in favor of such a program; this is another round of neo-liberal education reform, which was unfortunately popular on both sides of the aisle. To again quote Peter Greene: 

But what is not being discussed is the effect that such a system could have on the public school mission. From “we are going to try to give your child the best possible education we can afford” to “we are going to give your child the bare minimum and if you want more than that, you’ll have to either pay for it yourself or go shopping for a voucher.” From a system funded and controlled locally with assistance from the state to a system that depends on donations funneled through the federal government.

I will again say that I am concerned that this may have popularity near the Governor's office. We need to be clear: this is not money that can support the programs we need to provide in public schools. 

Here comes the MA voucher push

 Because OB3, Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" has a provision for vouchers by state in the language, you knew that others would join the Boston Globe's editorial board in pushing for them in Massachusetts. Thanks to Yawu Miller's coverage of a recent panel at the JFK Presidential Library*, we now know not only that this is happening, but who the players are and what their talking points are going to be:

“Covid relief money is gone, inflation is bad, buses are expensive, special education is expensive,” former Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeff Riley told an audience of about 200 that filled an auditorium at the museum last Wednesday. “We have an opportunity for this new pot of money to help us with things like expanded learning time, high dosage tutoring, special education services. This seems like a time when people should get together.”

Yes, taking time away from his fulltime job of trying to get schools on the AI bandwagon, our former Commissioner is all in our vouchers, but we're going to frame it as public school assistance. Also involved: 

The National Parents Union is spearheading the local coalition which aims to pressure Gov. Maura Healey to adopt the tax credit program. So far, the group counts 124 organizations in support, including The Pioneer Institute, The Boston Foundation, the Lynch Foundation, 45 individual Catholic Schools, 18 Montessori Schools, 13 Jewish day schools, the umbrella organizations supporting those types of schools and dozens of YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs.

NPU will surprise no one, nor will the private schools, but the outside of school organizations no doubt have this sold to them as after school dollars that could be coming their way.

Miller does---as always--an excellent job of framing the issues with the push, very much including that they don't actually work. But he also notes that Governor Healey, whose decision this is, so far has been silent on this issue. That is very concerning. There will be an effort to frame this as a "ed reform" issue, and she has some close to her that are in on that.

Oh, and incidentally: the list of things that Riley includes largely are not things on which the vouchers could be used: 

Despite promises that the scholarships could cover special education services, among other school-related expenses, Fliter said that wouldn’t be true for public schools. The way qualified education expenses are defined by the federal government only includes things for which schools bill parents.

“Unfortunately, when you dig into the text of the statute and what the regulations are from the IRS and from others, it becomes very clear that a qualified education expense, as it’s referenced in the Internal Revenue Code and by the Coverdell Education Savings Account, does not include anything like special education expenses,” Fliter said.

Read Miller's coverage, and then keep an eye out on this one.  

*who maybe don't exercise a say over this, but one does question the venue choice

Transportation consolidation and lack of competition

 sound familiar? There's some good coverage from Vermont this week:

Brooke Olsen-Farrell, superintendent of the Slate Valley Unified Union School District, said only one company, Bet-Cha, responded to the district’s last two bids for service. This is despite the supervisory union hiring a transportation consultant to drum up more bids across the Northeast, she said.

Olsen-Farrell said her district faces similar school bus workforce challenges and concerns with lack of vendor competition identified by the Agency of Education’s report.

What's great about this report is it goes back into some causes: 

 Private equity’s presence in the market has generated concern among advocates and school officials around the quality of service available to school districts. Some fear it could magnify workforce shortages and the small vendor pool. 

Azani Creeks, a labor issues researcher and campaigner for the nonprofit Private Equity Stakeholder Project, said the trend is part of an emerging pattern at public schools of outsourcing and privatizing systems like health care, data management and food services to private-equity-affiliated companies.

Private equity companies have been investing in the student transportation sector for at least 15 years, Creeks said, according to tracking by the Chicago-based watchdog organization.

Remember, a private corporation exists to create profit for shareholders, not to provide service for students and their families. 

And this part will sound locally familiar: 

While many districts contract out transportation services, some Vermont school districts, like South Burlington and Champlain Valley, operate their own systems — albeit not without their own workforce challenges.

Jean-Marie Clark, the South Burlington School District’s director of finance and operations, said having an in-house fleet with drivers on staff allows the district a certain level of flexibility and control that they may not get with a third-party company.

“It feels like we are in control of what’s happening and what routes are running and what routes aren’t running, as opposed to that being told to us,” she said.

Staffing shortages remain a persistent issue, officials said, although some districts have found more stability after they increased wages

I'll note again: there are other things districts collaborate (note the word on); this is another to be looking at. 

Regarding the finalists for Commissioner

As per usual, this is only my personal opinion.

When asked for my (own personal) opinion about what we need in the next Commissioner, I have said two things: 

Commissioner's screening committee

As they meet for the first time on Monday, the list of screening committee members for the search for the next Commissioner has now been posted, and I think it may be more heavily stacked with privatizers than the previous one, which was rather remarkable for that.

It's also odd to me that at least three members of the Board are timed off--they're not even lame ducks, as the law doesn't recognize that!--and we're all pretending it's perfectly normal that the law noting that they need to be off is just being ignored whilst they go on with choosing the next leader of K-12 education in the state. 

Three years on: civility and gender and power

 This has been buzzing around in my head since the Board's vote. I'm still wrestling with how to put this; there is much more to be said on this.
As always, this is simply my personal perspective as a single member of the Worcester School Committee.

The pins on my lapel the night the Board met.
The raven says "Nevermore."

When asked for their reflections on the public hearing regarding the proposed charter school, Board of Ed members Matt Hills and Michael Moriarty both said something similar.

They said the hearing was civil. 
That people were respectful. That people were polite.

And both men meant that as praise, clearly, from the context of that remark: it was good that Worcester had been respectful.

I have blogged, generally live, Board of Ed meetings at this point for years. I've followed the appointment of a new Commissioner (I was at the meeting at which it was announced the prior Commissioner had died in office that morning), the changes to regulations required by federal law changes, the shifts under federal administration changes, the various responses to a pandemic, and much more, including lots and lots of votes on charter schools.

And yet, I haven't gone back to the end of February vote to cover it. 

Partly, it's psychosomatic; I had norovirus during the meeting, and I can feel the symptoms coming back when I open the video. 

But also, this was a vote that I put a lot into (as has been noted; thank you for that), and I genuinely do not remember one in which the level of contempt for the thoughtful, logical, relevant concerns was quite as clear as this. Far from being treated with respect, we were dismissed.

But there have been other meetings recently that have been similar.

Let's note, for example, the Commissioner and Board's ongoing (and usually not properly posted) dramatic exasperation with the Boston Public Schools, which often is led off by the Commissioner expressing his sardonic puzzlement over how it is that whatever it is they've decided is the problem this month could be possible when city and district leadership came before the Board and assured  them, and so forth.
Tell me he would have done that if Marty Walsh were still mayor, or if Tom Payzant were still superintendent. 
But Boston is, and has been, under female leadership--women of color, in more than one case--for some time now, and so this mocking tone is something the Commissioner brings to the Department's purported oversight. 
And the Board's "oversight" of the Boston Public Schools is of course much less oversight than it is following wherever it is the suburban writers of the Boston Globe feel is the latest "scandal" (seldom if ever informed by anything happening in the education world at large) which somehow (again, without posting) find their way to the table of the K-12 education system for the entire nearly one million students in Massachusetts. 

And thus while I am at heart an optimist (I don't know that I could bear to do what I do otherwise) to some degree the vote at the end of February I suppose shouldn't have surprised me. The known motivations of a Board nearly entirely appointed by Governor Baker have been well-known, and largely have little to do with the largest concerns in public education at this time. (Let me note the quite marked exceptions of the Secretary, and the student, parent, and labor seats, as so often.)

We were respectful, it seems, but we were unheard. While I have, as a member of a public board myself, respect for processes of public procedure, gestures towards 'respect' may not be heard.

There is a massive effort across the country to privatize public education funding through voucher expansions. Last year's Supreme Court Carson v. Makin decision opened the door wider to public funding of religious schools, something which could well be built upon should the Supreme Court decides in favor of the school in Charter Day School v. Peltier. Trans youth are under open attack across the country, including in Congress itself. There is a wave of book banning and limitations of education across the country. Far from grappling with the systemic inequities in education, we have states doing nonsensical things like setting up CRT hotlines. Youth mental health has been declared a national crisis. 
And teacher turnover has hit a new high.

Today marks the third anniversary of the weekend when it was made starkly clear to us in Massachusetts that we in local leadership were on our own--it's the weekend when literally every single superintendent in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts called off school due to the pandemic prior to the Commissioner (who had told superintendents to hold off) and the Governor taking action. That it wasn't catastrophic was due only to local leadership.
Unfortunately, that lack of leadership was indicative of what we would see throughout, and now, with crises of many kind spreading across the country, we have this lack of support and lack of care and thought and focus only continuing. 

I'll say what I said when I ran to get back on the Worcester School Committee three years ago:
We deserve better.

I do not know how we get out of this without major changes on the Board (the Board, recall, appoints the Commissioner). The only way that happens is action by the Governor, unless the Legislature takes the step (as it did in the 1990's) to remake the Board itself. 

It is, though, a disservice to not only local leadership in education, but to everyone in public education in Massachusetts, and most importantly, to our students throughout the Commonwealth to allow this lack of focus on the raging emergencies in public education to continue. 
It's simply far too important.

Hearing on the proposed charter school

Hey, so before I start this not-at-all liveblog of the charter school hearing, which will absolutely not cover everything, and which is mostly drawing from my Twitter feed (scroll UP), but also other sources, please note:

YOU CAN STILL SUBMIT TESTIMONY THROUGH JANUARY 4!
It goes to charterschools@mass.doe.edu

And as always, the following is my summary, my work, my commentary, and does not claim to be otherwise. 

As MassLive notes in their coverage: "Of the 13 people that spoke in favor of the charter school, 11 were board members, trustees, teachers or staff at Old Sturbridge Academy or Old Sturbridge Village."

"It's in the report."

As you may have noted, I spend a good bit of my time at public meetings: I go to school committee meetings, I go to Board of Ed meetings, I go to City Council meetings...

In all of those meetings, there is one particular seemingly innocuous phrase that chills me:

"It's in the report."

That's the tip off that someone who was supposed to read something didn't. 

That's the teacher noting that you didn't do your homework. 

That's the public official demonstrating to those paying attention that they have not done their jobs.

Now, those who work on the administrative end of these are generally very good at being politick about this, so you may not hear those words particularly. But listen carefully during deliberations, and you can often tell who has done their homework and who hasn't.

We have had a great deal of demonstration of this during this week in Worcester.

The report, again, is here. And, as Tim Murray, speaking for the Chamber of Commerce, said yesterday, "Candidly, it's a no-brainer."

I have yet to see a question raised that isn't already answered by the report.

If some of us seem somewhat frustrated by this, I would say that's for two reasons:

1. This is a hypothetical issue for every single member of the Committee. Beyond emails, this in no way impacts the daily life of any member. The 13,000 or so Worcester students and their families that depend on Worcester Public Schools transportation do not have that luxury.
2. This has been discussed since 2010. If this is new or seems sudden to you as a member of the public, that's understandable, as most of us don't follow every angle. But if you're a member of this committee suddenly this week calling for more time or greater information? You haven't been doing your job.

I will also say that I have yet to hear anything from any member of this committee about the Nelson Place students, some of whom are non-verbal, who were on Durham buses for hours last Friday, as their parents grew increasingly frantic, getting no response from Durham and eventually calling the police to find their children. If you read the responses--and note that Durham called in their national crisis manager for this--there's a quick exchange of blame between the bus company and the superintendent. We have seen no apology, no explaination, and no assurances that this won't happen again. A promise of a plan by Friday doesn't fix this.

Never mind the next contract: how is it that no one is investigating the appropriateness of continuing the current one? 

The problem those parents had and that Nick D'Andrea speaks of this evening on Worcester News Tonight are not, ultimately, those of "district communication," as I have seen cited. Yes, it will be nice to know precisely where the bus is when it is late; we were supposed to have the app two contracts ago, so no one gets a cookie for finally getting that done. Currently, the WPS Transportation office can't tell us where the bus is, because frequently, Durham hasn't told them that, nor, frequently, has Durham told the schools.
You can take that from someone who has, multiple times, called Transportation, called Durham, called the schools, and called Transportation back again. Guess which places hadn't heard from the third?

Thus it will be difficult to take seriously administrative and school committee concerns around chronic absenteeism or tardiness, when one of the chief culprits is rehired to continue and at a greater rate. 

While I've been experiencing new levels of sealioning in my own comment threads, my sense is that there are some who are legitimately thrown by the idea of having to figure out how much busing is going to cost over several years. Running budgetary projections (luckily) isn't everyone's job. It's not easy (we were trained in it through MASBO). It is, though, a regular part of business--you'll note, for example, that the Chamber isn't thrown off by this--and moreover, it is a regular part of what the school district already has to do: that's what every single year's budget is. If you as a member don't believe these projections, what were you voting this past year's budget based on?
Yes, that budget includes commodities--we heat buildings and run vehicles including buses already--and maintenance and changes in enrollment and all of the things that can also be concerns of busing.

...which makes sense, because the district is running buses already.

This isn't the district "getting into the busing business" any more than the district is in the "restaurant busines" because thousands of children are fed (yes, in house) each day, or getting into the "custodial business" because the buildings get cleaned (yes, by district employees) each day, or getting into the "facilities management business" because the buildings are maintained (yes, by district employees) each day. It is a basic responsbility of the district to transport children to school so they can learn, just as it is a basic responsibility to feed them, to keep the buildings they are in clean and maintained. They can hire employees to do it or companies to do it. Hiring companies to do it, incidentally, is called "privatizing services." It is the district's responsibility just the same.
And right now, it is not happening. 

I thus find it extraordinarily difficult to believe the professed concern of those who have come out with public statements of their positions (in whatever fashion). Posting of your outrage in a comment thread to parents, telling families that they are "heard," and otherwise sending out sentiments means nothing when you're going to vote to continue the same conditions for another two years.

If you review the report, you will find: 

• an "apples to apples" comparison with the Durham contract (p. 2). As noted in the F&O meeting Monday, the district has chosen to move away from diesel, for a cost savings, while Durham is continuing with diesel, which costs more.
• the vehicles being leased to own, including the process and cycle (p. 7, including a link, if you copy the PDF, to a comparative Durham methodology); note that cost is included in the projections and there is still the savings
• where the vehicles would be housed (the School Committee has already voted on this)
• collective bargaining issues (see page 7 and 11)
• the pipeline to driver development (also page 2)

If at this point, you as a member of this Committee are claiming that you don't have enough information or have a need to wait? It isn't due to lack of information, and you had your waiting time. The bid came in in June. 

It's in the report. 

Consider the source

I saw that this presentation from former Secretary of Education Paul Reville got a good bit of press a week or so ago; what I didn't see get fleshed out quite as much is the event at which he was presenting. The main sponsor? The Mass Education Equity Partnership. And who is that? Basically, Families for Excellent Schools (the pro-Question 2 folks) reborn.
I think it's important to note that so far, MEEP is the main voice pointing out that educational inequities are tied to race and ethnicity in Massachusetts. That's a problem, because we don't need the funded-dark-money-only-solution-is-privatization crew making that point for us.
Watch this one. As we head into a new Legislative session and the debate over how to increase funding for public education in Massachusetts heats up, this is going to be an easy group for the Governor to align with.
Arguably, of course, he already has.

Board of Ed for December: Springfield Empowerment Zone

Wulfson: established in 2014 "innovative approach to underperforming schools"
middle schools and one high school
"garnering a lot of interest from educators"

Johnston: receivers coming before you ever month
Springfield "an in-district receivership model"
Board hasn't heard from Springfield in two years; in third year of implementation

Gabrieli, chair of empowerment zone along with co-chairs
"one crisp goal...reach a 50/50 set of goal"

Here’s the first slide summary of results from the Springfield Empowerment zone #MAEdu pic.twitter.com/B3Wkv9ltgH

— Tracy O'Connell Novick (@TracyNovick) December 19, 2017

Debate of the Resolutions: 2017 Delegate Assembly at the MASC conference

Posting today from the MASC Delegate Assembly down that the Joint MASS/MASC Conference. The resolutions they are considering today can be found here.
reading of the resolutions is waived

Commissioner's search (if you couldn't read the photos)

Appointed by Chair Paul Sagan to the screening committee is:
Voting members (current members of the Board)
himself
Secretary Jim Peyser
James Morton
Margaret McKenna
Katherine Craven

Non-voting members
Vanessa Calderon-Rosado (former member of the Board, CEO of Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion)
Sydney Chaffee (National Teacher of the Year, Codman Academy Charter School)
Alex Cortez (Reimagine School Systems Fund--New Profit; Board of MATCH Charter and Innovate Public Schools)
Paul Dakin (retired superintendent, Revere Public Schools)
Marcia Faucher (adjunct professor, Roger Williams University; former New Bedford principal)
Robert Gittens (Executive Director, Cambridge Family and Children Services; former Boston School Committee member)
Sheila Harrity (superintendent, Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School; Vice Chair, Board of Higher Ed)
Matt Hills (Newton School Committee; he's also a managing director at LLM Capital)
Beverly Holmes (on Springfield Empowerment Zone board; former member of the Board of Ed)
Linda Noonan (of Mass Business Alliance for Education)
Mary Walachy (of the Davis Foundation; member of the Early Ed Board)

I've tried to give a relevant link as warranted; if there are others, send them along 

The skunks are back

It's March and the skunks are back out. And it's time for a few to show up at this garden party.
I posted some of this on Twitter this morning.

Let's talk about this arts academy at Burncoat. It appears, as it is to be dubbed the "Hanover Insurance Academy," that the Worcester Public Schools are indeed "open for business." We are now raffling off naming rights to, well, it's not even clear that it is to the highest bidder, as no numbers have yet been mentioned.
Our public schools are a public resource. Public goods held in common are only held in common under the public trust. They should not EVER be for sale.
There is always a "good" reason. There is always a need, an emergency, a wish...but once you've sold out, you've sold out.
And it appears we have. In fact, it appears that we aren't even going to have public governance and educator oversight of this project:

"This is about as classic private partnership that you can get," Belsito said "We meet regularly with them. We're not just the financial resources. We want to help develop programs. We want to make sure that the talent that we have at Hanover is helping to complement the great work of the educators here in this building."

emphasis added
By what right and by what training and experience does anyone at Hanover have to "develop programs" in a public school (heck, in ANY school)? Why would Hanover be meeting "regularly" with "them," and who is them? The administration? The site council? The faculty?
Are any of these meetings going to be public? Are any going to involve any elected oversight? Or has Hanover just managed to privatize itself an academy in Worcester?

But that, of course, is only the first problem.

Burncoat already has, and has had for thirty years, an arts magnet. Kids can start in kindergarten at Worcester Arts Magnet, then go straight through Burncoat Middle and High School. It's a program that exists nowhere else in central Mass; I'm not even sure it has a parallel anywhere in Massachusetts. It's among the myriad of underappreciated and too-often-underfunded programs in Worcester that you can't get elsewhere.
The magnet doesn't have an admission policy aside from space (and theoretically, behavior, though that doesn't happen often). The elementary school has a lottery ('though it does take siblings first); the middle and high will take transfer students if there is room.
And magnet students are guaranteed transportation in Worcester.
Thus, kids of all sorts can and do attend the magnet. Does it represent the fully array of Worcester? No. Is it closer than it would be if they used grades or worse yet, test scores?  You bet! And ANY kids who attend Burncoat can be part of the magnet at any point in their schooling, so long as there is room in class and in their schedule.

So how is the new academyTM doing admission? The district is holding...

information sessions for parents whose students were invited to apply for a spot in the academy on March 9 at 6 p.m. and March 14 at 6 p.m. The deadline for parents to apply for their child's sport in the academy is March 31.

emphasis added
This is conjecture, but I'm going to bet here that they didn't comb the record of every child in grade six in the entire district. But there's a very easy report to run off and create a cutoff on: test scores.

And what happens if you use test scores as a proxy for "talent"? You end up with a group that is overwhelmingly middle class and white.
You end up with an academy that doesn't look much like Worcester.

What you do manage is to migrate a bunch of higher test scores to Burncoat, though, And, while Sullivan has Goddard Scholars, and WEMS has the science academy, and Forest Grove draws from the wealthier (and paler) part of town, Burncoat has an arts magnet that doesn't pull based on test scores, so it gets no advantage from its magnet on that count. But only letting kids into their special academy by test score will pull the rest of Burncoat up nicely.

And how do I know this? Because we laid it all out in the report we gave back in 2014 around creating an advanced academy of some kind in the city. Limited admission programs are always, always a problem on this. A school or district not only has to be aware of this; they have to actively plan for this NOT to happen in order to avoid it.
It appears, on the contrary, that this is the end being sought here.

Thus we will have a privatized academyTM for students with high test scores.
What's funny is there's no lack of those around. But those don't dare call themselves public.

School choice advocate (and so much more!) Betsy DeVos is Trump's choice for Secretary of Education

So, who is she?
If you want to update your Twitter lists, you can find her account here (she was at 450 followers or so when the announcement came through).
The Chalkbeat did a "five things" that would be indicated by her appointment: her big issue is charters, vouchers, school choice: "The DeVos influence is one reason that Michigan’s charter sector is among the least regulated in the country." That gave us Detroit schools that are here, plus commentary around Michigan education like this. (Let me in general just recommend the Detroit Free Press as a resource) The DeVos family used their political donations to sway lawmakers around school choice and related efforts.
She doesn't oppose Common Core (she's on the Jeb Bush spectrum there), so that looks like another campaign point of Trump that we're taking a miss on (we were anyway, as the federal government has no oversight there, anyway, but we could have gotten someone who was going to complain about it).
They also note "Outside of education, her family gave heavily to efforts to ban same sex-marriage in Michigan." This is in keeping with the donations of the family in general, supporting groups that are against legalized abortion, LBGTQ rights, and the like. (UPDATE) The DeVos family also supports the Acton Institute, which recently gave a ringing endorsement to bringing back child labor; Peter Greene covers this well.
She's been upfront about what she sees her political contributions for; she is directly quoted:

“I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party,” wrote DeVos, according to Mayer. “I have decided, however, to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect some things in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American values.”

There's an extensive article about the family's giving here (from March). The family is among the top funders of conservative politics in Michigan. Not only that, but they have been active in destroying the other side, as in their efforts to get so-called "right to work" legislation passed in Michigan.
The family wealth, as Politico notes, comes from Amway. Richard DeVos, her husband, is the former president of the company; his father (also named Richard) founded the company. The connections Muckety maps out are fascinating: most notably, her brother founded Blackwater, and apparently now is an advisor to the crown price of Abu Dabai.
It is worth noting from a Massachusetts perspective that vouchers are banned by the state constitution (and remember that the next time the Pioneer Institute starts talking about Know-Nothing clauses. It may have been anti-Catholic when it passed; that doesn't mean that separation of church and state should end).
More as I have it.