Mercedes Schneider here does a close reading of one of Betsy DeVos’ greatest hits, the speech where she says that government sucks and the way to improve education is to let everyone get public money to go to school wherever they want without any oversight. Also, fire more teachers.
Betsy DeVos: “Government Sucks” and “We Don’t Fire Teachers Enough”
That pretty much sums up her deep philosophy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
She’s a weasel and is on a power trip.
LikeLike
All here should read what DeVos has written and said in this speech. Nothing new but the open disgust and disdain she shows for the peeons comes through quite loudly.
http://www.federationforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Betsy-SXSWedu-speech-final-remarks.pdf?e40fe9
LikeLike
After reading just a portion of DeVos’s disgusting observations, I had to stop. It was too much toxic glop for me to digest in one sitting. One of her comments: “Inconvenient Truth #5 — We don’t pay teachers enough, and we don’t fire teachers enough.” Just hideous. Arne Duncan said essentially the same thing on his recent appearance on C-SPAN. All public school teachers have targets on their backs; actually, all teachers in whatever venue have targets on their backs. There’s a lot of churn in charter schools and teachers in private schools are one pink slip away from dismissal if they incur the wrath of some connected crazy parent. These reformers claim to love teachers in one breath but in the next breath they reveal their true loathing for teachers. They consider teachers as some sort of underclass to be used and then tossed aside like so many used tissues.
LikeLike
“. . .her deep philosophy.”
Ahhh, the smell of not so subtle irony in the morning!! Gotta like it!
LikeLike
Hipwader deep….like my grandfather used to get in manure on his farm.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My understanding from talking with guys who have done that manure clearing is that chicken coops are the worst of all clean up jobs. They say they smelled chicken crap for weeks after getting done with job. It wouldn’t wash off.
LikeLike
Having grown up on a dairy farm that also had a major chicken operation, I feel the need to add my piece. This led me to being an authority on feces. I also,worked for a time in city sewers, rather an advanced degree. No one can argue with tautology: manure is manure.
I would like to,add a few postulates.
Testing is manure.
Those who believe in it are full of manure.
Now for a bit of simplistic transitivity.
DeVos likes testing
Testing is manure
DeVos likes manure
Who could argue with that?
LikeLike
What comes through loud and clear is DeVos’ arrogance and her lack of any experience with public education. DeVos simply regurgitates the “free market” ideology with the naive belief it will solve problems. She offers no evidence for her views other than her own personal experience. While she criticizes government for stifling innovation, she fails to understand that “reform” is another top down policy that harms public education’s ability to do its best work. Her belief that choice is a solution is misguided. The truth is there is less choice in market based systems that are led by amateurs that lack any foundation in understanding effective ways to educate. The facts indicate that choice is diluting our resources while millions are squandered on bad ideas and antiquated one size fits all teaching. Her own state where she has imposed her wrong “solutions” is in a free fall of deterioration and squandered resources. Anyone with any sense would not give this woman a position where she can cause further destruction to public education.
I am sorry that DeVos was bored in her private high school so it make me wonder why she would want others to attend schools with untrained teachers. My son and I were challenged in high school as we both were fortunate enough to attend public magnet schools with courses taught by certified teachers.
LikeLike
Betsy devos goes on trial today in front of our esteemed congressional politicians. My prediction is she will not get the nod or if she does she will not last the term ala kathy black.. because Trump does not want to deal with the fact that Betsy Devos is a no nothing bozo who thinks she knows education because she has the dollars. People we are living in a troubled country now that the stats came out today revealing that our one percent billionaires now have more wealth than just about half of the entire world population. The US has let these bloombergs of the world accumulate massive wealth due to globalization and now the billionaires are taking over politics influencing elections all over the country and taking over our government in a coup. Devos is a complete sham who has single handily destroyed the schools in the once great state of Michigan…take a look at Detroit or nearby cities and look at the school records which reveal the lowest performing charters in the country!!!!!! GO get em Chaz eat em up for breakfast bud
LikeLike
There is something very fishy about scheduling this hearing at 5 pm. It has probably happened before, but I am not aware of any hearings on by any committee that take place that late unless it would involve a crisis. It seems like the committee majority is trying to limit coverage as much as possible. Anyone else have better reasons?
LikeLike
Just figured out the answer to my question: Because the likelihood of the any of the cable networks to cover it are low since it would cut into their evening revenue stream.
LikeLike
Well, it’s certainly true that government sucks more and more the more DeVos gets her fangs in it.
LikeLike
Excellent and apt imagery!
LikeLike
“The Marrytaucracy”
This woman, Betsy D.
Is one who feigns to be
An expert with “The key”
But all that we can see
Is “marrytaucracy”
For any who are not aware, Betsy DeVos derives her position entirely from the money of the family she married into.
LikeLike
Melinda Gates is another example of the marrytocracy in action.
LikeLike
‘government really sucks’ -Betsy Devos Then why join it?
Actually what she is saying is that human nature sucks, people can be lazy and greedy. Too bad she does not realize human nature rears it’s ugly head in the free market, and with lack of regulation is even worse.
LikeLike
“The Groverment Plan”(Grover Norquist Plan)
To drown it in the tub
You need to shrink it down
To sink it like a sub
You need to go to town*
And take a job to lead
An agency or two
To really make it bleed
Is what you’ve got to do
*DC
LikeLike
Below is the list of DeVose’ “five observations” of why “government really sucks.” It’s her “inconvenient truth #4” in the quotation from her speech on Schneider’s site.
Here’s my offering of an inconvenient truth to Betsy DeVos: Her list is one of the finest examples of straw-man thinking (aka: abbreviated ignorance masquerading as universal truth) I have ever seen in my entire career as a teacher and culture-watcher. If you need another metaphor: reading her list is like listening to a blind man describe the leg of an elephant he don’t know is an elephant.
But seriously, folks; there are many points to argue here; but the main one is that **DeVos apparently doesn’t understand that, in a democracy, government is not another competing corporation with arbitrary power; but rather government serves the people as a CONDITIONING AGENT for all of the other institutions, corporations, and religious orders that are built in and on it. (How does she think AmWay or Blackwater got going and had the freedom to grow?)
Democratic government, insofar as it’s doing what it’s supposed to do, legitimately works on behalf of The People–all of us.Government regulates and supports precisely because it conditions the ground for, but is not a competitive part of, the business community or even capitalism as such. By definition, to put government and business into the same undifferentiated power source (under corporate and/or religious control) is the become either a fascist state or a theocracy (a return to the dark ages); and it is to divorce the power structure from the vast variety and vibrancy of the people who are served in a free and working secular democracy. A democratic government doesn’t suppress but supports the freedoms of both corporate and religious institutions to thrive. But Devos would have us shoot ourselves in the foot.
For education, to remove government as the conditioning agent of a free democracy (the freedom of questioning and of ideas that are essential to the vibrancy of a democracy), and to replace it with this or that corporate or religious control, is to invite a blanket of ideological limitations on what is otherwise an open and ongoing–and creative–conversation.
Oddly, in her list below, Devos first personifies “the government” speaking as if it had “fears” and feelings, and then attacks those attributes as if that “government” person were affronting her, and as if she were attacking the overlord-person that she apparently wants to become. But “Government” doesn’t “fear entrepreneurs, open systems, and crowd sourcing.” The government is not a competing agent who “fears” anything. On the contrary, democratic government is the foundation of freedom that is known all over the world for fostering entrepreneurs, open systems, and crowd sourcing. (I cannot believe she actually said that.)
That democratic governments seek to impose regulatory limits on corporations is usually because many don’t limit themselves, seeming to think their freedom comes without responsibility to themselves, to others, and to the planet. And so in fact they draw-down laws that, in their generality, do tend to confine everyone else–because laws ARE general; and because controlling corporate or religious overreach only means government is giving self-protective voice to the people its meant to serve.Though of course the DeVos of the world see that control and regulation as limiting their own freedom–freedom, that is, to do to others whatever the hell they want, regardless of what is really good for any of us. Such is the silo-view of the 1% that she claims herself to be among.
I would argue with her religious intentions, but that’s for another time and place. The rest below is quoted from Schneider’s site:
BEGIN QUOTE
Inconvenient Truth # 4. Government really sucks. And it doesn’t matter which party is in power. Having been around politics and government my entire adult life, I have five observations about government for you:
Government tends to believe in top down solutions and government fears of bottom up solutions.
Government tends to stifle innovation and it abhors improvisation. Any good military strategist will tell you that a battle plan rarely survives past the first engagement. After that, you have to improvise to survive and to win.
Government tends to favor one size fits all solutions handed down from central command.
Government likes committees…a lot. Committees kill all the really good ideas and generally all the really bad ideas. They produce middle ground mush.
Government prefers control and tightly-defined systems. It fears entrepreneurs, open systems, and crowd sourcing. All of which they find threatening. END QUOTE
LikeLike
The Ripofflichen Party in Michigan has been blaring its Small Government, Local Control, Bottoms Up jingle for as long as anyone can remember — but every move they have pushed through has worked to ramp up Central Committee Control and Top Down Totalitarian Dictatorship over ever aspect of social life. Unless you are one of those people like the DeVos Klan for whom Entrepreneurship means Yet Another Pyramid Scheme, you will find life in Michigan growing more and more fascist every day.
LikeLike
Government allegedly does suck sometimes, but, for sure, Betsy DeVos and her billionaire peers suck even more. Imagine what the U.S. will be like of a Besty DeVos was our leader for life.
Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried?”
Well, Betsy DeVos fits “all those others that have been tried.”
I found this interesting from Moyers and Company on “Why Money Doesn’t Trickle Down” explaining why pure capitalism is one of those bad forms of government vs democracy.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/11/a-wealthy-capitalist-on-why-money-doesnt-trickle-down/
LikeLike
In order to pitch in with the fight against Betsy Devos, the producers of the pro-public school documentary “GO PUBLIC” have decided to forgo further monetary gain which they could accrue from streaming or DVD sales:
God bless them for that.
“GO PUBLIC: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL DISTRICT”
While the entirety of the film — one day in the life of a public school district covered by dozens of video crews — makes the point of why we must preserve democratically-controlled public schools and public school districts, it’s the scene at night (again, recorded on the evening of the school day profiled) that show exactly what the Bettercrats (a term coined by Peter “Curmudgucation” Greene) like Devos despise most — the living, breathing workings of the democratic governance of public education.
Devos and her allies believe that only the wealthy, money-motivated elite should have any say in how public (rather formerly public, soon-to-be privatized) schools are run or governed.
In this scene BELOW, however, you see people — many of little or moderate income — being able to influence and guide the governance of their schools.
THAT, my friends, is the LAST thing that the Betsy Devos’s, the Reed Hastings’s, the Peter Cunningham’s, the Eli Broad’s, the Walton family’s, the Bill Gates’s, the Campbell Brown’s, the Nina Rees’s, the Jed Wallace’s, the Ben Austin’s (etc.) of this world want or desire.
The wealthy elite believe that he only choice or control that the regular folks should have is “to vote with your feet.” — if you don’t like your school, move to another privately-run one, then another one, then another one … with the schools and districts like the one profiled in GO PUBLIC having gone the way of the dinosaurs.
Those regular citizens folks have indicated over and over and over that an actual “vote-vote” is infinitely superior to the dubious “vote-with-your-feet-vote.”
“That’s too bad,” say the Devos’ types. “You’re going to take school privatization if we have to jam it down your throats.”
Not without a fight, we won’t.
Go to:
( 00:18:01 – )
( 00:18:01 – )
The scene is a meeting of the democratically elected Pasadena Unified School District comment from parents, teachers, and citizens. That’s right. Regular folks giving up their evening, off-work hours to participate in the democracy that Devos et all wish to wipe out nationwide — and for all practical purposes have indeed wiped out in most school districts in Michigan that are providing education to middle- and lower-income students.
These regular citizens are fighting for funding to save teachers, aides, programs, etc., with the implicit message to the elected school board members being that if they don’t deliver, they’ll be voted out in favor of someone who does respond to the democratic will of the people.
Read the GO PUBLIC producers’ statement BELOW:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
“These are critical times for public education and confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education would put our entire public education system at risk. Her relentless efforts to privatize public education are well documented and the results have been devastating in Michigan and beyond.
“Because of the urgency of this situation we have decided to make our documentary film, GO PUBLIC: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL DISTRICT, available to view on-line for one week.
“GO PUBLIC: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL DISTRICT
“Please share it with anyone and everyone so they can see for themselves what we are at risk of permanently dismantling and destroying if Betsy DeVos is confirmed.
“Public education is the cornerstone of our democracy. We need to understand, support and advocate for our public schools, not undermine them with disastrous policies.
Most importantly, click this link TODAY and tell your senator to Vote NO on Betsy DeVos! Please repost this email on social media #StopDeVos.
“Thank you very much and GO PUBLIC!”
Like us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterFind us on Pinterest
Blue Field Productions, 1033 North Mentor Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91104
LikeLike
Isn’t it time we need this ploy for failure.
If the doctors were removed from a hospital when they refused to use procedures that are antithetical to their objectives/
And, if the doctors could b fired when the medial practice was defunded so there was no updated technology or materials to help patients heal, then the hospital would fail ,too.
And if the most experienced practitioners were made to leave, so that only the novice practitioners were hired, then the ESSENTIAL knowledge WHICHIS ONLY ACQUIRED THROUGH PRACTICE, would be lost, and the hospital would fail.
The war on teachers began over two decades ago.
It was hidden, as Duncan and clones pointed at those ‘bad’ teacher and the media,one by the billionaire aided their spin with FAKE NEWS. Lie after lie, from Rhee and Klein and Moscowitz and Emmanual and spin from Walton, Pearson and Gates LED TO THIS MOMENT WHEN A WOMAN WHO WANTS US TO BELIEVE SHE IS FIT TO RUNT HE SHOW…. attacks the teachers….ALL THESE YEARS LATER, when hundreds of thousands of the best and brightest professional have been thrown to the dogs.
I wrote this in 2004,
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
after it happened to me in 1998, when I was a celebrated educator.
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
The only way this could still be spoken aloud by someone who is a TOP choice, is if the WAR ON TEACHERS is still hidden!!!
Gimme a freakin’ break!
LikeLike
DeVos has shown herself to be ignorant about education law and policy, but hasn’t anyone else on here been part of a situation where an incompetent teacher was paid just as much as or more than you as you were working your arse off but the other teacher was doing bupkus? I certainly have, and more than once. Sure it’s an administrative problem, but that doesn’t make it any less real!
LikeLike
Shifting the focus off the ignorant, incompetent, born wealthy, married even wealthier, biased, religious fanatic, billionaire, Betsy DeVos, and slamming alleged incompetent teachers, are you.
Incompetent teachers are not the problem when it comes to a child’s education. The only exception would be if a child had the same teacher for every subject K-12.
And how do the corporate robber barons of the 21st century, like ignorant Betsy DeVos, want to solve this problem? Punish every teacher by treating them like trash.
How many teachers are we talkign about?
The Persecution in the Los Angeles Vergara trial was going after every teachers due process rights by claiming that due process rights protected incompetence teachers. The billionaire that funded this trail to take due process rights away from every teacher, didn’t make their case and that verdict in that trial was overturned by California’s highest court.
Why? The two expert witnesses from Harvard University that were called to testify against teachers both estimated that 1 to 3 percent of teachers were allegedly incompetent.
That means 97 to 99 percent were not incompetent, but to get rid of the 1 to 3 percent, we must punish 100 percent of the teachers.
On that note, when our daughter was in 3rd grade, I told her she was responsible to learn and teachers were responsible to teach and help students when students asked for help. If she didn’t learn, even with an incompetent teacher, I told her it would be her fault, because he can even learn from an incompetent and/or burned out teacher.
She graduated from high school as a scholar athlete with a 4.65 GPA and was accepted to Stanford where she graduated in June 2014.
When a parent tells their children it is the teachers fault when they don’t learn, for whatever reason (boring teacher, incompetent teacher, mean teacher, etc.) then that parent has given the child an excuse not to learn. After all, it is never their fault.
In her second year at Stanford I asked her if she had any incompetence teachers K -12. She thought about for while and then said, “Two.”
Yet corrupt, ignorant, and biased fools, like Besty DeVos, want to punish teachers, only teachers and blame for it all when I child doesn’t learn.
And I’m not evening throwing in what poverty does to a child’s ability to learn, or being a latch key kid, or watching too much TV, texting, video games, or a lousy lifestyle eating a horrible diet that includes massive sugar consumption, etc.
None of that counts to the teacher basher.
LikeLike
As I said, more than once, and I am in a tiny school. The percentage is high, though the numbers may not be. Yes, in my school, a students could conceivably have the same teacher for four years.
LikeLike
So, you allege that in a small rural school and/or school district with a small number of teachers and a tiny population of students, that the percentage of incompetent teachers would be higher if, for instance, there was one incompetent teacher out of four.
That would be correct if that teacher was actually incompetent, but what if that teacher was the best they could find.
In remote rural areas, it is even difficult to recruit and keep doctors let alone teachers. If the alleged incompetent teacher was better than the other applicants, then what choice is there but to fill the position?
“Rural doctor shortage spurs states to act.”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/rural-doctor-shortage-spurs-states-to-act/
Most remote, rural school districts also pay less; teachers don’t earn as much as teachers in a large urban school district. How do you attract the best teachers in that situation?
“As of 2008, the National Center for Education Statistics reported an estimated 7,757 rural school districts across the country, with about 11.3 million students enrolled in primary or secondary rural schools. The NCES offers a table of the percentages of public primary and secondary schools with teaching vacancies in different subjects. The table shows high percentages of job vacancies in rural schools in subjects ranging from special education to vocational education. Furthermore, after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools were met with new requirements and standards to increase the quality of education.”
https://teach.com/where/types-of-schools/other-types-of-schools/rural-schools/
It also doesn’t help that every state has different requirements for teacher quality. For instance, in some states, all it takes to be a substitute teacher in even high school classes is a high school GED and no college education.
I wrote about it in: Substitute teachers in the United States are often paid poorly and treated like trash
Why not learn from Finland, a country that has high standards for its public school teachers? The U.S. has no national standards. Every state sets its own set of standards for teachers.
“How ‘Qualified’ A Teacher Is Varies by State”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10742167416824000
What is a tiny rural school district to do when the state law requires a teaching credential to teach, and that tiny school doesn’t have a large number of applicants to select from?
Do we punish every teacher in the United States, more than 3.5 million, for that rare and unique situation by taking away their due process rights as spelled out by the U.S. Constitution?
Thanks to this test, rank-and-punish agenda against public education and its teachers, a corporate war being waged to privatize-and-profit from public dollars, there is now a shortage of eligible teachers in the country.
“American has a teacher shortage, and a new study says it’s getting worse”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/america-has-a-teacher-shortage-and-a-new-study-says-its-getting-worse/2016/09/14/d5de1cee-79e8-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html?utm_term=.b35775eda510
If the corporate raiders of public education, that call themselves reformers, really wanted better quality teachers, they would demand higher standards for its teachers like Finland does and the treat those professional teacher with respect; trust and support them.
Teacher quality is not going to improve by waging war against them, badmouthing them, treating them like trash, cutting funding to schools, and slashing pay.
But the opposite is happening as the U.S. transitions from community based, democratically managed, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools to an autocratic, secretive/opaque, for profit, often inferior and fraudulent corporate carter school industry.
“Charter schools and teachers”
“Based on available data, charter school staffs appear more diverse, have fewer years of experience, and are paid less than those at the typical public school.”
“Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin”
“Backers of these reforms are particularly enamored of a new type of charter school represented by the Rocketship chain of schools—a low-budget operation that relies on young and inexperienced teachers rather than more veteran and expensive faculty, that reduces the curriculum to a near-exclusive focus on reading and math, and that replaces teachers with online learning and digital applications for a significant portion of the day. Rocketship proposes that its model—dubbed “blended learning” for its combination of in-person and computerized instruction—can cut costs while raising low-income students’ test scores (Rocketship Education 2011).”
“National research shows that charter schools, on average, perform no better than public schools. There is thus no basis for believing that replacing traditional public schools in Milwaukee with privately run charters will result in improved education.” …
“As charter schools have grown over the past two decades, multiple studies have compared their performance with that of traditional public schools. Their conclusion: There is no discernible difference. One recent meta-analysis reviewed the results of 83 studies conducted over 12 years, concluding that “on the whole, charters perform similarly to traditional public schools” (Miron and Urschel 2012, 228–230).”
http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/
LikeLike
I teach English. There are usually about 90 applications for every position. There is no excuse other than administrative inaction, generally due to politics, for granting continuing contract status (known to the layperson as “tenure”) to people who by just about any measure (except for being “fun” or “nice”) — including attendance, planning, and creation of lessons and assessments — do not do their jobs.
All teachers ARE already being punished for the actions of a few, in that the education establishment not only lets the lazy stay in their positions along with the industrious but also pays them the same. Before you even say it, rest assured– I am not including any sort of standardized test scores in “any measure” because I know how ludicrous it is to judge one person’s job performance by another person’s test performance– just as ludicrous as it is to pay an industrious worker the same as a lazy one. That was the essence of De Vos’s comments in this once instance.
LikeLike
Lloyd, are you saying we should look at Finland and have federal control of educator qualifications?
LikeLike
No, I’m saying to learn from those countries that have the best public education systems in the world instead of reinventing a square that should have been left a wheel. Compare our fifty different systems that are then divided into 15,000 school districts to their one national system and answer this question: why is Finland better – compare and contrast?
LikeLike