As Education Secretary Betsy DeVos seeks to expand school choice nationwide, including online, Pennsylvania serves as a case study in the shortcomings of the virtual charter school model. | Alex Wong/Getty Images

US education secretary Betsy DeVos is a big proponent of charter schools, so much so that she and her husband have put their money behind their values and beliefs. Over a decade ago, DeVos invested in junk-bond king Michael Milken-backed online charter-school operator K12, which targeted the growing homeschool market. But K12’s overly expansive business model made it both significantly less profitable and more prone to regulatory and operating deficiencies than smaller, less ideologically driven competitors, wrote The Atlantic prior to Besty Devos' senate confirmation. K12 still trades below its IPO price from 2007 and documents discovered by The Atlantic suggest that DeVos was a backer of Milken's parent company Knowledge Universe, now defunct.

It's not the case that no charter schools are successful. Over the same period, Bright Horizons emerged as a focused and successful leader in employer-sponsored early learning centers. Translated, Bright Horizons Family Solutions is also the largest provider of employer-sponsored childcare in America and Fortune's 2017 list of America's best companies puts Bright Horizons at #90.

Not so with K12 and the home school business in Pennsylvania, writes Politio in its Oct. 8, 2017 DeVos champions online charter schools, but the results are poor. The article focuses specifically on Pennsylvania and the 48 percent graduation rate in its virtual charters. Three states California, Michigan and Pennsylvania represent half of all charter schools in America. Michigan is another state with terrible charter schools results, and California is also struggling, based on an updated August 12, 2016 story the Mercury News reported California charter school scores dive.

“Here’s what I would say to Betsy DeVos — do those parents really understand what they’re sending their kids to?” said Mark DiRocco, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators in the Politico article.

Research by Bryan Mann, now an education professor at the University of Alabama and who studied virtual charters while at Penn State, establishes a strong connection between uneducated parents and their preferences for virtual-learning charter schools, writes Politico.

In America today, about six million good-paying, skills-rich jobs are unfilled. In an ideal world, uneducated parents would all follow the sacrifices made by many immigrants of working around the clock in order to send their kids to some of America's finest educational institutions.

It's a well-established fact that uneducated parents who want their kids educated online hold deeply conservative, religious-based views. Their do not want their kids to be contaminated by outside ideas -- more liberal ideas -- associated with higher learning. One asks if this is fair to children and a question of sacrosanct parental rights injuring the future of their own kids. Presumably, these are questions the Trump administration will never ask Betsy DeVos, given their commitment to this voter block of uneducated, evangelical white Americans.

Bottom line, there are many problems in America's education system -- problems that go far beyond America's teachers' unions. As Trump moves to end immigration in America, one expects our education scores to plummet even further.

PEW Research wrote in Feb. 2017: US students' academic achievement stlll lags that of their peers in many other countries. These new scores represent a major decline in the last five years. At one time, the US education was considered the best in the world. This PEW analysis shows just how far America has fallen, compared to other countries in the world. For example:

One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38thout of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

Michigan Gambled on Charler Schools. Its Children Lost. The New York Times

The Mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulín Cruz chose a NASTY woman tee for her Univision interview after Trump's drop-in to Puerto Rico on Tuesday. The crude US president tweeted last Saturday ""The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump."

"When someone is bothered by someone claiming lack of drinking water, lack of medicine for the sick and lack of food for the hungry, that person has problems too deep to be explained in an interview," Cruz said during the interview. "What is really nasty is that anyone would turn their back on the Puerto Rican people."

Trump is the aggrieved party, claiming that the complaints of Cruz about his slow federal aid response to Hurricane Maris are politically motivated. Note that Cruz is not a Democrat and is registered with neither major party.

“I am begging, begging anyone who can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency,” the mayor said last Friday. The mayor's remarks followed earlier ones from acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke's comments in which she called the federal government's response "a good news story."

“Maybe from where she’s standing, it’s a good news story,” Cruz said. “When you’re drinking from a creek, it’s not a good news story. When you don’t have food for a baby, it’s not a good news story.”

She added: “Damn it, this is not a good news story. This is a people-are-dying story.”

Carmen Yulin Cruz talks with journalists (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Those comments left Trump fuming. The president insisted on Friday afternoon federal officials were doing a great job with relief efforts.

"We have done an incredible job, considering there's absolutely nothing to work with," Trump told reporters at the White House.

"And a very big question is, what are we going to do with the power plant? Because the power plant is totally wiped out," he said. "There is nothing. The power grid is gone."

The utter stupidity of Trump's approach in Puerto Rico, where he threw rolls of paper towels into the crowd, much like a carnival barker, is contrasted with efforts by Sonnen GmbH, a German provider of energy-storage systems. Sonnen began delivering its storage systems to Puerto Rico before Trump arrived, in an effort to provide electricity for at least 15 emergency relief centers across the island. It’s working with local partner Pura Energia, which installs solar panels with Sonnen batteries.

“Our smart energy storage system is uniquely positioned to serve as a critical resource during the emergency in Puerto Rico,” Blake Richetta, the head of Sonnen’s U.S. unit, said in the statement.

Sonnen, operating on the island since 2016, is donating equipment for the 15 relief centers. Committed to Puerto Rico for the long-term, the company will donate profit from local sales to build as many as 35 additional microgrids on the island. The batteries are produced at the company’s recently opened factory in Atlanta, and the first microgrids will be operating in less than a month.

“It is our duty to stand firmly with the people of Puerto Rico and do everything possible to help start the rebuilding process,” Chief Executive Officer Christoph Ostermann said in the statement. “There is a clear connection between our mission to support humanity during a climate disaster and our mission to fight climate change.”

Tesla's Elon Musk, has also indicated that he is prepared to be a key partner in rebuilding Puerto Rico's power grid using independent batteries and solar power.

Puerto Rico’s chief innovation officer Glorimar Ripoli is also on board. “As the Government’s CINO, I fully support this! Let’s build the Puerto Rico we all want through innovation,” she tweeted.

Mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulin Cruz embraces Esperanza Ruiz, a city administrator, outside the government centre at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum after Hurricane Maria in San Juan, Puerto Rico Carlos Barria/Reuters

Amid Trump's demeaning comments to Mayor Cruz -- surely fueled by her being a woman -- we assume that he has little knowledge of her background. The Independent UK writes:

Cruz has, in some ways, been a lifelong politician: Class president in eighth grade; student council president in high school.

Like many Puerto Ricans, she left the island to pursue opportunities on the US mainland, earning a bachelor's in political science at Boston University and a master's in public management and policy at Carnegie Mellon.

Apparently Mayor Cruz held key positions not only at Scotiabank but also the US Treasury Department. After returning to Puerto Rico, Cruz became an adviser to Sila Maria Calderon, then the mayor of San Juan who later became Puerto Rico's first and only female governor.

The Carnegie Mellon grad strung together a people-centric coalition including including the LGBT community, students, Dominican immigrants and taxi drivers. Fueled by people power, Cruz defeated a three-time incumbent Jorge Santini.

“Politics is a rough game, and sometimes as females we are taught that you have to play nice,” she said in a 2014 in an interview. “Sometimes you can't play nice.”