My Critique of DeVos in “In These Times”

By dianeravitch

January 11, 2017 //

You know what I think of Betsy DeVos: she is unqualified to be U.S. Secretary of Education.

I was invited to introduce her to readers of “In These Times.”

This is what I wrote.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Privatization

22 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

GregB says:

January 11, 2017 at 5:36 pm

Perfect. Your first sentence…just perfect.

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Ellen Lubic says:

January 11, 2017 at 6:29 pm

Excellent column, Diane…you hit if all.

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Joel Herman (@jwherman11) says:

January 11, 2017 at 7:02 pm

Another fake news outlet (Sarcasm) that I read everyday

Second Greg and Ellen

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JB2 says:

January 12, 2017 at 9:25 am

Wish I could forward this to Kellyann Conway. On Fox Business, 1/12/17, she said that the DeVos confirmation hearing was the only hearing that has been delayed; although it couldn’t be because
paperwork has not been completed. (DeVos confirmed) Suggested cause was “political” and “obstructionist”.

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- JB2 says:
  
  January 12, 2017 at 12:45 pm
  
  Kellyanne
  
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Linda says:

January 12, 2017 at 10:05 am

Diane’s well-written summary, forewarns us. The codified principle of separation of church and state, is no guarantee of its reality, in Trump’s nation.
Adding- a post at Conservative Leaders for Education (CL4E) recommended, for U.S. Secretary of Ed., the former President of Pat Robertson’s university. The university President was also an education consultant to the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. Other recommended candidates included DeVos and, a Fellow of the Gates-funded Aspen Pahara Institute.

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Catherine Blanche King says:

January 12, 2017 at 11:01 am

A clearly written synthesis of the problem facing us with the spectre of DeVos’ “hiring.” I think if “we” could have gotten the argument to Michelle Obama (or to B. Obama himself), the situation would have been different during his time in office. I seriously doubt either would endorse such doings if they knew what they entailed for the country.

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- Linda says:
  
  January 12, 2017 at 12:37 pm
  
  $$$$$
  
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  - Catherine Blanche King says:
    
    January 12, 2017 at 12:43 pm
    
    Linda remarks “$$$$” to my reflection on the Obamas and their stance towards education:
    
    I’d hate to think that it’s all about money for the Obama family, but I’d certainly change my mind if provided adequate evidence for it.
    
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  - Linda says:
    
    January 12, 2017 at 10:22 pm
    
    $$$$ to get elected. Moneyed interests gave Obama’s campaign 4 times the amount that unions gave him.
    
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  - Catherine Blanche King says:
    
    January 12, 2017 at 10:25 pm
    
    Linda: Do you have a citation? And which of those monies were explicitly meant to destroy public education? That leads to my next question: do you think that having money necessarily makes donors into oligarchic despots?
    
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  - Linda says:
    
    January 13, 2017 at 4:43 pm
    
    Robert Reich reported the statistic.
    America’s 400 richest families are in control of the U.S.- control of the House, Senate, Presidency, most governorships, most state chambers…They appear to have the same economic agenda- concentrating wealth. Buffet, the most visible contrarian, gives his “philanthropic” money to oligarch, Gates, to spend. Despite the 80-year-old’s claims to be giving away his fortune, in his lifetime, he saw his wealth rise this year to $74.1 bil. I won’t defend my generalizations about the richest 0.1% any more than, revolutionaries will split hairs when they show no mercy to them. (Maybe, they’ll pause over Soros, or not.)
    Massive social upheavals are driven by economic deprivation, not by any other issues.
    
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  - FLERP! says:
    
    January 13, 2017 at 4:53 pm
    
    Any word on when the Messiah, I mean, the revolution will be arriving?
    
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  - Catherine Blanche King says:
    
    January 13, 2017 at 6:43 pm
    
    Linda: about $$$$. My earlier lament was that I thought Mr. and Mrs. Obama would not support the “reform” movement if they understood what was going on in education, e.g., the draining of resources from public education with the end intent of killing it and, then money-making from education as a business model. .
    
    Whatever money Obama has received cannot speak to that lack of understanding. And it’s my own thought on this matter–because I have watched them closely during this past 8 years–not because I have direct evidence of it. So I don’t claim to know it–any more than you can claim they took money from oligarchs and deliberately bypassed public education just in order to fill their campaign coffers or line their pocketbooks–which is what your $$$$ reply to my note implied.
    
    You can call me naive about my sense of the Obamas if you want; but I have to question jump-to-judgments and conclusions about the man and his family just because it might feel good for whatever reason.
    
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  - Linda says:
    
    January 14, 2017 at 10:00 am
    
    Flerp.
    THIS year, Trump’s run and win was totally unexpected?
    
    Catherine,
    Pres. Obama is a politician out of Chicago (home to Rahm Emanuel). The fact that Obama thought he would be better for the country than McCain, Hillary or Romney doesn’t make him evil. (I’m glad we had our first Black president.) It is naive to think that, in the climate of failed private prisons, that the perils of public school privatization is too complex, for an intelligent man like Pres. Obama, to deduce. IMO, the Walton-funded Center for American Progress runs the Democratic Party. CAP, like Obama, practice silence on the subject of privatization of America’s most important common good. Hillary’s selection and promotion of Tim Kaine showed us that the Democratic Party hierarchy knows the vulnerability of DFER’s policies in the “party of the people”.
    A few weeks ago, Michelle Obama said that the vote for Trump was a rejection of hope. That’s serious denial.
    
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  - Catherine Blanche King says:
    
    January 14, 2017 at 10:33 am
    
    **Linda: I was not making a statement about Obama’s intelligence (sheesh, you are really resistant–is there a reason?). My point is that I don’t think he pressed to understand it with any depth and, if he had, he wouldn’t have supported such “reforms.” It’s not like he had nothing else to do or a series of political goals. But from what I saw of Tim Kaine, I think HE gets it about education. I was looking forward to seeing how that worked out.
    
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  - Linda says:
    
    January 14, 2017 at 11:36 am
    
    Resistant- “didn’t press to understand with any depth”. The issue has deep implications but the subject is shallow- privatization of a common good.
    
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  - Catherine Blanche King says:
    
    January 14, 2017 at 1:53 pm
    
    **Linda: Sigh . . . . ** So you didn’t imply with your “$$$$” that Obama deliberately took money for avoiding the public/private education issues?
    
    And now you say: “Resistant- ‘didn’t press to understand with any depth.’ The issue has deep implications but the subject is shallow- privatization of a common good.”
    
    So I was wrong about your $$$$ implication above? And that you agree that the issue has deep implications, but that Obama (wrongly, of course) just “didn’t press to understand with any depth”? I guess we both wish he had.
    
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  - Linda says:
    
    January 14, 2017 at 8:36 pm
    
    Failing to identify the correct problem results in wasted time and effort, pursuing the wrong solution.
    Well-intentioned D.C. and state politicians just don’t have enough of the right information?
    The influence, of political campaign donations and/or whatever, additional compensation is provided, by tech billionaires, by Wall Street (DFER), and by CAP, which is funded by the Walton’s, et.al. will evaporate, if supporters of public education just gain enough access to decision-makers, to plead their case?
    There’s a reason, Media Matters omitted Gates, DFER, Eli Broad and the Walton’s, in the article Mercedes Schneider described at her blog.
    I won’t be adding anymore to this thread.
    
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  - Catherine Blanche King says:
    
    January 14, 2017 at 8:47 pm
    
    Oh, good. Whew.
    
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Karen Wolfe says:

January 13, 2017 at 6:17 am

This is perfect for sharing outside education circles. DeVos is not the only pick who would destroy the department she would head, but she might be the strangest.

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Catherine Blanche King says:

January 13, 2017 at 8:40 am

Diane: RELATED–More systematic overreach by the (ALEC?) right bubbling up: “Killing Tenure at Public Colleges and Universities” From Inside Education: by Colleen Flaherty (my emphases)

“Lawmakers in two states this week introduced legislation that would eliminate tenure for public college and university professors. A bill in Missouri would end tenure for all new faculty hires starting in 2018 and require more student access to information about the job market for majors. Legislation in Iowa would end tenure even for those who already have it.

“The bills, along with the recent gutting of tenure in Wisconsin and other events, have some worrying about a trend.

“’These are serious attempts to undermine universities and the role of universities in society,’ said Hans-Joerg Tiede, senior program officer for academic freedom, tenure and shared governance at the American Association of University Professors. ‘If they’re not directly coordinated, there’s a strong current going through all of them.’
”
“No New Tenure in Missouri
‘If you’re doing the right thing as a professor and teaching students to the best of your ability, why do you need tenure?’ asked Representative Rick Brattin, a Missouri Republican who wrote HB 266. . . .

“Ben Trachtenberg, an associate professor of law at Mizzou and chair of the campus Faculty Council, said ‘tenure is important in its own right, in that it helps protect academic freedom, helps encourage cutting-edge research and helps faculty engage in shared governance, which is important to the long-term success of the institution.’ . . .Trachtenberg said, ending tenure for new hires would put the university at a grave competitive disadvantage in recruiting top faculty candidates. . . .'”

“Ending Tenure in Iowa
Opposition to Senate File 41 in Iowa, proposed by State Senator Brad Zaun, a Republican, has been louder still — even coming from the state’s Board of Regents. . . . Zaun’s . . . bill . . . would prohibit at all public institutions of higher learning the ‘establishment or continuation’ of a tenure system — so even those that already have it would lose it.

“Joe Gorton, an associate professor of criminology at Northern Iowa University, said he thought arguments in favor of either bill betrayed a serious ignorance about how academe works. **This is a terribly dangerous idea,’ he said of eliminating tenure. ‘Tenure doesn’t prevent termination for just cause, but it prevents the discipline or termination of a faculty member who teaches or conducts research in areas that are controversial or politically unpopular.’ . . . **

**”‘We’re not delivering the mail here. . . . What people fail to understand is that tenure is one of the important fortifications of American democracy, in that in the areas of arts and sciences and literature, universities are a bastion for intellectual freedom. … When tenure ends, the politically powerful or economic elite can control what goes on in universities.’ . . . **

“Broader Concerns: Tiede said he wasn’t surprised that the new bills came from states in which the AAUP has recently investigated public institutions for violations of academic freedom or the norms of shared governance. . . . A proposed bill in Arizona also seeks to prohibit courses at state colleges or universities that ‘promote division, resentment or social justice toward a race, gender, religion or political affiliation, social class or other class of people,’ among other criteria. Tiede said he didn’t expect that the picture would brighten under the incoming administration. ‘This looks like the perfect storm of government and legislative attacks on higher education.’”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/01/13/legislation-two-states-seeks-eliminate-tenure-public-higher-education?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=2138c77e9c-DNU20170113&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-2138c77e9c-198488425&goal=0_1fcbc04421-2138c77e9c-198488425&mc_cid=2138c77e9c&mc_eid=f743ca9d07

Legislation in two states seeks to eliminate tenure in public higher education
http://www.insidehighered.com

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