Ken Zeichner, professor of teacher education at the University of Washington, warns that Betsy DeVos is unqualified to serve as Secretary of Education. Her efforts have been devoted to undermining public education and promoting public funding for religious schools. This is dangerous to a democratic society. He urges her defeat by the Senate Committee that will interview her tomorrow or by the Senate as a whole.
One of the main aspects of DeVos’ beliefs about education is to use public-tax money for vouchers that would enable students to attend unregulated private schools, including religious schools.
The research on the effects of voucher programs in Milwaukee and elsewhere clearly shows that these programs do not offer a better alternative to public schools for the families that use them, and they undermine the ability of public-school systems to educate the students who remain.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s a slight sliver of a possibility of a hope. Monica Crowley has “decided” not to take a position in the Trump administration with all the blowback about her plagiarism. And from CNN: Washington (CNN) President-elect Donald Trump’s choice [Puzder] to be labor secretary has voiced second thoughts in recent days, because of a relentless barrage of criticism from Democrats, labor unions and other liberal groups, a business ally and GOP sources tell CNN. Maybe Betsy will have second thoughts when she sees all the negative reactions to her appointment? Or maybe she’s as narcissistic as Trump?
Even if, somehow, DeVos doesn’t end up taking the gig or making it through confirmation, she will be replaced by someone just as devastating to public education.
This is where we make a big mistake, focusing on individuals (in this case DeVos, who is a caricature of an Ed reformer/privatizer) rather than what is essentially an entire class…..a political/leadership class that is almost entirely for Ed reform. Republican and Democrat.
HRC would have put up a reformer. Trump has. Obama certainly did.
This isn’t really about DeVos, who is certainly way out there and a religio-maniac to boot.
We simply can’t forget that the existential/eliminationist threat against public education and organized teachers is deeply bipartisan, systemic, and broad-based.
DeVos is interchangeable with any other possible pick from a Democrat or Republican.
We can confuse ourselves by focusing on DeVos too much and losing sight the bigger picture.
NYS TEACHER,
My view is that you take them down one by one. If we could stop religious zealot Billionaire Betsy, we then focus on the next one.
Pre-emptive surrender is a losing strategy. Guaranteed losing.
One relatively recent historical example that comes to mind is Bill Clinton’s Attorney General nomination sage that went from Zoe Baird to Kimba Wood and finally to Janet Reno. Of course, that had a lot to do with the so-called “Nannygate” controversy, but it shows that it doesn’t necessarily lead to a worse outcome.
saga not sage
Is is not a good thing that president elect Trump is against Common Core?
Jab456blog,
Trump “said” he was against Common Core but everyone who is likely to be appointed to the U.S. Department of Education is in favor of Common Core. Trump fooled you!
Donald: “Pay attention to what I say and tweet. Don’t look behind the curtain to see what I actually do.”
Joe,
CNN reported last night that Trump’s choice for HHS invested in a biotech company, then voted for legislation that benefitted the company, then got a campaign contribution from the company.
Imagine if this situation were reversed and we were set to confirm an education secretary who had spend the last 30 years lobbying against charter schools?
Imagine if the new ed secretary had lobbied feverishly behind the scenes to cut funding to charter schools, as DeVos has done to public schools?
Imagine if the new ed secretary had referred to charter schools as “dead ends” and said we need a “revolution” to close them down and replace them?
This would never, ever happen. Yet somehow it’s okay that DeVos has done all these things to public schools.
There’s a blatant double standard in ed reform. They would never allow an opponent of charter schools anywhere near that job, yet they’re all celebrating putting an opponent of public schools in the position.
I’m tired of paying public employees to attack public schools. I don’t care what their personal ideological beliefs are- if they’re opposed to the schools 90% of children attend they should not take these jobs. Charter schools and vouchers have advocates in the Senate. I think the 40 million children in existing public schools need one too.
It is insane the way “reform” has become so entrenched despite meager results, tremendous chaos, and millions of dollars in waste and fraud. While some in “reform” may be ideologues, the vast majority of the opposition comes from corporations and billionaires. “Reform” is not a people’s movement. It is an attack on democracy, local control, unions to gain access to public money.
It’s amusing to watch the echo chamber rush to vow that they are “agnostics”, as in this piece:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/embracing-school-choice-doesnt-mean-abandoning-public-education/article/2611985#.WH16RZ2hszI.twitter
You know, it’s simply not true. This “movement” offers absolutely nothing to 90% of schools. In fact,DeVos has worked for 30 years to gut funding to Michigan public schools.
They have an obligation to inform the public they oppose the schools our children attend. It’s really the least they could do.
Chiara,
I make that point in the NPR interview “The Takeaway” –that the money for charters and vouchers comes out of the public school budget
Resistance to choice may have ebbed because deep pockets purchased the echo chamber representatives. People and even some of the media are catching on to the corporate cabal against public education.
The only good thing about Billionaire Betsy is that she makes clear that the agenda is charters and vouchers, e.g., privatization. Watch for her to say she lives public school as one of the choices. What she won’t admit is that every dollar for vouchers and charters is a dollar cut from the public schools. The pie is not growing, it is being cut into three portions.
Lots of people believe “choice” is like a buffet. They fail to understand that it is a zero sum buffet. Every choice made means there is less food for everyone else at the buffet. It is automatic austerity for public schools. Vouchers make zero legitimate sense, even less sense than charters.
I also notice something with these Senators. They’re all happy to stand up in front of cameras in DC and bash public schools and hire an anti-public school political activist for this position, but this isn’t how they talk when they’re running for election in their respective states.
If the majority of Senators in the United States are ideologically opposed to the vast majority of schools in the states that elect them, they should have the decency to run on that. It’s really the least they could do. They can also do us the favor of staying out of our schools when they need a photo op or a campaign venue. If privatizing US public schools is such a popular position and such a great idea, why do NONE of these people run on that?
It’s also self-aggrandizing nonsense for ed reformers to continue to promote themselves as somehow fighting powerful forces.
“When Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary goes before a Senate committee on Tuesday, she’s expected to have a famous former senator make her case for confirmation. Only it won’t be a Republican ― it will be former Democrat-turned-independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, according to a transition source.
Trump’s nominee, the billionaire Betsy DeVos, has been one of the most prominent funders for “school choice,” which steers public funds toward charter and private schools. Lieberman, like plenty of centrist Democrats, was a booster for school choice and charter schools during his time on Capitol Hill.”
The “movement” is packed with powerful political operators and billionaires. They can spare me their romantic notions of “revolution”.
When Lieberman and DeVos launch their “public schools suck!” campaign in DC today, all the power will be on the ed reform side. They ARE the status quo.
They do not work on behalf of children in public schools and that’s outrageous and should be unacceptable rather than celebrated and feted.
We have the best government money can buy! I feel your outrage, but it is, in fact, the current situation. The only solace I can think of is that more regular people are catching on to the “robber baron” schemes of privatization.
Lieberman is on the board of DrVos’ American Federation for Children, which lobbies for vouchers and charters. The DeVos’ family finds anti-union, anti-worker, anti-campaign finance reform, anti-gay activities. Anti-Semitism is probably part of their galaxy of far-right causes. Joe Lieberman should be ashamed.
“Anti-Semitism is probably part of their galaxy of far-right causes.”
Not necessarily. The xtian fundamentalist dominionist far righters (sometimes called Christian Zionists) are usually hard core Israel supporters. They use Jews and other “false believers” to try to ensure that their version of interpretation of 2000 year old Middle Eastern tribal myths will become reality with the return of their godman.
And the break from reality as described above is what worries me most about DeVos and her ilk. For if her god demands something, well in the god’s name it must be accomplished. Just ask Georgie the Least and his talking with his god in leading to the Iraq War.
As I once said to a good friend who is an Orthodox Jew and a Republican, those Christian Zionists who support Israel can (and many are) be anti-Semitic. To them Israel is the essential weigh station to achieve their vision of the End Times. They will “support” Israel and right wing causes such as the settlements, but they still believe that Jews are beyond redemption and will be excluded from Heaven when the End Times arrive. They will gladly walk on Jewish carcasses (as well as the rest of us unbelieving heathens) as they stroll into their Heaven. Is that, at its core, anti-Semitic or not?
Has there been a single word written in the vast ed reform lobbying and research sector on what DeVos means for public schools?
Public schools have so little value in ed reform they don’t even merit a mention?
I read that one of the Democratic Senators will be working hard to retain standardized testing in public schools. Does ed reform offer anything besides testing for the 90% of children who attend public schools? Why do they feel they don’t have to offer public school parents anything? We’ve been somehow designated as lesser?
“We’ve been somehow designated as lesser?”
–Pee-ons in the peanut gallery need to sit down and shut up. We know what we are doing, you don’t.
When Hillary Clinton said this about charter schools, all of ed reform were outraged. She had to retract it:
“when she argued that most of these schools “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.”
Compare that with ed reform national leader Jeb Bush. This is the absolute contempt he expresses for every public school in the country:
he says the United States has “over 13,000 government-run monopolies run by unions.”
Not a word of protest out of the ed reform movement. Public schools are fair game for every politician with a microphone and agenda, yet charter schools may not be criticized at all.
Is this a movement composed of “agnostics”? Of course not. There’s a blatant double standard. The fact is an opponent of charter schools would never even be nominated for education secretary, but they went out of their way to choose an opponent of public schools. That’s not fair and public school parents, teachers and students should be angry at this shoddy treatment from “their” representatives in DC.
“he says the United States has “over 13,000 government-run monopolies run by unions.”
Would you please post a link to that statement? TIA, Duane
Duane, just Googled “Jeb Bush 13,000 monopolies” and this came up: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/florida-politics-blog/sfl-jeb-bush-blasts-public-school-monopolies-20141120-post.html
Thanks for the link, GregB.
I hadn’t heard/seen that particular iteration from THEJebster before. I have seen reference to him talking about public education as being a monopoly which is false on the face of it. Maybe one of his advisors told him to modify his statement to not be as totally inane, just a little less inane because how can there be “over 13,000 government-run, unionized, politicized monopolies”??? As WE know there can only be ONE monopoly, duh, that is the definition. Still a stupid eff statement coming out of THEJebster’s pie-hole.
One of these years the Bushes and Clintons need to go away on a family vacation together and never come back to curse us with their presence.
I love (sarcasm alert) the last line: “Education should be a national priority,” he said, “not be turned into a federal program.”
If it’s a federal program, doesn’t that imply something about priorities?
I never cease to wonder at all of the logical inanities, and insanities the edudeformers can come up. It’s almost as if they’ve all been programmed together.
Danger Will Robinson!!!
See Mercedes Schneider’s analysis of a new report that shows the administrative costs and cuts in other services caused by the ” miracle” of chartering the New Orleans schools.
Posting the same report today. Every impartial study of charters says they spend more on administration and less on instruction than public schools.
Duh, that’s the object, eh!
Sun-Tzu said in “The art of War”: “If a battle cannot be won, don’t fight it”.
see
http://thewisdomwarrior.com/2016/06/01/if-a-battle-cant-be-won-dont-fight-it/
Charles,
If you lived under Hitler, would you have been an SS guard, because if a battle cannot be won, don’t fight it?
If you lived under a racist society and you were black, would you give up or would you fight it?
As a Jew, I have never seen surrender as a viable option.
I’ve been listening to NPR’s open forum about charters/vouchers/public schools.
One common theme, regardless of preference, is that our system needs fixing in some way or other.
Again.
What’s particularly disturbing about this is that the reformers have been “fixing” us for about 15 years, now.
That might have been their goal all along: begin by spreading the disinformation (failing schools, nationwide), take over the system, and then make that failure a reality.
The Right sows doubt (about climate change, etc.) to weaken their enemies. We can sow doubt about charters.