This Back-to-School season is filled with feel-good news stories about students attending internet-based schools. What the news outlets don't tell you is that these schools mostly get terrible results and often rip off taxpayers.

Betsy DeVos tours the U.S. telling school children their schools are "a mundane malaise," but three out of four of parents say their public school is excellent or good, and only 7 percent say their school is not so good or poor.

Betsy DeVos says conversations about education should be about "buildings and systems." But the once grand, now crumbling schools St. Louis built for its children remind us the permanency of schools as institutions is important.

If DeVos really cared about the welfare of students, she would speak out about what her boss President Trump is doing to hundreds of thousands of undocumented students whose fate he has cast to the wind by threatening to abandon DACA.

While Trump's boasts about crowd size in Houston struck some as self-centered, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos struck a similar tone in Florida against a backdrop of the slow-motion catastrophe striking the state's public schools.

Many political leaders would rather impose ideological "solutions" from the bag of mirrors known as "choice" – or more accurately "privatization" – than provide the resources we know it takes to ensure high-quality schools.

There's mounting evidence of widespread teacher shortages. Lousy pay is a problem for sure. But the lack of teachers isn't just an economic problem. It's also cultural. And loudmouth politicians who denigrate teachers aren't helping.

Progressive candidates and office holders have had little to say about school vouchers and charter schools. They'll need to wise up soon, as these policies are rapidly being defined by an emboldened grassroots as not at all progressive.

As Donald Trump unites Democrats on civil rights, healthcare, and immigration, his views on education policy are dividing the party. Democrats in denial of this are only going to make the party’s already marginalized status worse.

Betsy DeVos says she supports "great public schools," but her actions show her hypocrisy. She undermines public options, yet favors schools owned by her friends. What she really wants is to tilt the playing field toward private ownership.

Parents getting their children ready to go back to school may be dismayed at the long and pricey school supply lists they're getting from their local schools. There's a reason for that.

Neil deGrasse Tyson recently blamed public schools for “the rise of flat-Earthers." Anti-science views may indeed be in resurgence. But what’s the evidence that public schools are the main cause of this?

The Trump-DeVos education agenda is extraordinarily unpopular, which gives Democrats a big opening. But A Better Deal is almost silent on the topic. Here are 5 reasons why now is an ideal time for Democrats to speak up for public schools.

Enraged school choice advocates denying fact-based criticism from Randi Weingarten and the NAACP can't continue to ignore the sordid past of their cause and the problems posed by charter schools and vouchers today.

Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos say public schools are a failed idea and we need other options. But a school district in Southern California is showing that given sufficient resources and supports, public schools can get the job done.

In the current environment of forced scarcity, public-school parents are not only treated like criminals in education budget battles, they end up picking up more of the cost of this public service, too.

"There is no reason to trust this woman," is what NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia says about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons not to trust her, based on her dark-money past and her current behavior.

The NEA and NAACP want a moratorium on new charters that aren't subject to democratic governance and aren't supportive of the common good in local communities. Now Democratic leaders to join this call.

After a string of special election defeats, Democrats are retooling their messages about the economy and healthcare. They should update their message on education, too; there's evidence voters would welcome a change.

Local news reports from all across the country drip, drip a constant stream of stories of charter schools doing bad stuff that our tax dollars fund. Why do both Democrats and Republicans still fetishize them?

A popular tactic for separating "good" charters from the pack of awfulness Trump and DeVos want to unleash is to hold a preference for "nonprofit" charter schools over the profit-making variety. Is there really a difference?

Based on some of her recent hires for the Department of Education, Secretary Betsy DeVos seems intent to ignore students' rights, including protections for LGBT students, women, and the disabled.

Research shows there is a direct correlation between what we spend on schools and how well our students perform. But our elected leaders continue to slash taxes instead, and redirect more funds to unfounded experiments like charter schools.

In defending her budget, Education Sec. Betsy DeVos refuses to answer whether, under her watch, federal dollars would go to schools denying admittance to African-American and LGBTQ students.

Betsy DeVos wants to give your tax dollars to private schools and businesses, and tell you it's an education "transformation." She's eager to "get Washington and the Federal bureaucracy out of the way," but she wants you to pay for it.

Joe Padilla and Egle Malinauskaite are part of a group marching 200 miles from Chicago to the Illinois State Legislature in Springfield. They hope to break a logjam that has kept Illinois without a state budget for more than two years.

The Trump administration plans to cut programs for low-income school kids and college students to stoke the coffers of privately-operated schools and private lenders who profit from college debts.

Proponents of school choice claim it's not about results. Choice is for choice's sake, they say. But choices parents make about their children's education don’t just affect their children; they affect us all.

Trump and DeVos have put Democratic charter school advocates in a bind. Dems are trying to differentiate themselves with misleading claims about how the charter industry works, as in David Leonhardt's recent New York Times op-ed.

The Build Schools, Not Walls campaign kicked off this week in unison with the massive May 1st actions for worker and immigrant rights. The theme: Instead of separating families and building walls, we must invest in our schools.

Student Action is countering the agenda to undermine public education put forth by Trump and Betsy DeVos with a grassroots campaign in states for free higher education that addresses the root causes driving the college debt crisis.

So far, Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has sent numerous signs she is assembling a staff and laying down a policy mindset that seems indifferent – if not outright averse – to the needs of nonwhite students.

Schools in low-income communities like Erie don’t have the resources to offer students opportunities that are available in wealthier areas. It’s important to know who to blame for the financial roadblocks to student achievement.

Resistance Recess is an opportunity for you to sound the alarm about what is happening to public education. A new communications tool has all the talking points and in-depth research you need to advocate for public schools.

Betsy DeVos tells parents they would do better by sending their kids to privately-run schools. But what types of schools would she prefer? Based on the religious and rapper-run schools DeVos visits, the possibilities are frightening.

Neil Gorsuch's court opinions reveal a pattern of antipathy toward students with disabilities. We must oppose his approval to the Supreme Court, as it would cement neglect for the vulnerable in legal precedent for generations to come.

The anger public school advocates have for Trump's proposed education budget cuts is well-deserved. But the target for their anger should not be just the extent of the cuts but also how the cuts are being pitched to the public.

Our public schools are not failing. They're being attacked. And the weapon of choice in the assault is the English language. Here's how we fight back.

DeVos has called public schools a “dead end,” but now as Secretary of Education, she’s all for them. Or so she says. But it's likely what DeVos means by "public schools" is different from what you and I think.

Both sides in the current education debate assume real progress can't come from schools themselves, but must be imposed by outside folks who aren't professional educators. What if that assumption is wrong?