Mother Crusader, aka Darcie Cimarusti of New Jersey, knows how to read federal campaign contribution reports. She knows that it has been widely reported that four members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee have received DeVos money. After digging, she shows that EIGHT members of the committee have received DeVos campaign contributions. They should recuse themselves to avoid the appearance of pay-to-play.
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2017/01/demand-that-senators-who-have-received.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It was not premeditated, since she was just recently nominated. So, what are the FEDERAL LAWS covering the ETHICS of this situation? Those are what will determine what and how things are handled.
Off topic- Author of “No More Heroes”, Jason Flaherty, interviewed at Truthout, today, states, “Inexperienced (and predominantly white) TFA recruits replaced veteran African American teachers (seasoned and unionized).” Flaherty adds an observation/criticism about savior- prescribed “punitive school discipline policies”.
Please, please, please: if you live in one of these states, especially Indiana and Louisiana, write as many letters to the editor that you can. Ask your friends to do so as well. And make sure they reference “Pay to Play” and add a link to Mother Crusader’s post.
Mother Crusader: “The unsearchable pdf [that Politico released of the paperwork DeVos filed with the Committee before her hearing] wasn’t terribly helpful or user friendly ….”
I made and put a searchable copy of the pdf at the link below. Download it in order to search it using your Adobe Reader or Acrobat Adobe software.
https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/ab4340a6-dba8-40aa-b8dc-b573ba8c64e5
I think that the pay-to-play argument, even with the EIGHT members that Devos has contributed to–will not hold much water. That objection has been anticiapated. It will be weakened by parallels with some of Obama’s officials put up for confirmation and approved. See. for example, this post today from Mercedes Schneider
Ed Patru, Friend of– and Mouthpiece for– Betsy DeVos
This CASH & CARRY society we have in these United States is REPREHENSIBLE.
How many people are on this committee?
Ha! She purchased them before she even got to DC.
This has to be come kind of record. She doesn’t even have the job yet and they’re already captured.
And, she may have golfed or yachted with them, at the 7 country/yacht clubs, where she’s a member.
Here is my letter (linked below) — addressing somewhat broader concerns.
http://angelsandsuperheroes.com/2017/01/09/1112/
“The standards are not the problem. The problem is the methodology being used to monitor them.”
If I may suggest a reading to you Krista. It will show you how the standards ARE the problem and how that “methodology”, i.e., standardized testing, (to which you refer with your comment about NAEP) is the flip side of that problem. The educational standards and standardized testing regime are onto-epistemologically bankrupt filled with errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudging that renders any conclusions COMPLETELY INVALID. That reading is Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Minor concern but relevant. In your letter you address DeVos as the Secretary of Education. She isn’t. She is the nominated Secretary of Education until confirmed.