Mercedes Schneider reprinted Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s first public speech.
The one point that comes through is that she is totally in the dark about why her nomination encountered massive public resistance. To the public, she is an unqualified, uninformed enemy of public schools.
But Betsy thinks she ran into opposition because public school educators are opposed to her innovative ideas!
Privatization is not new. Charters have been around since 1990–26 years–and is is now well-established that most are no better than public schools, some are far worse, and they are not innovative.
Vouchers are not innovative. Milwaukee has had since 1990, Cleveland since 1995, and DC since 2004. There are among the lowest performing urban districts in the country.
DeVos has no new ideas. She is wrapped around School choice, the cause celebre of segregationists for the past 60 years.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane: Like Bill Gates’, Betsy’s ideological silo-walls are pretty strong–won’t let in any truth. I keep thinking of that famous Jack Nicholson line “YOU CAN’T STAND THE TRUTH!”
But Bill Gates said about innovation in education on Charlie Rose a couple of weeks ago: Charlie Rose asked about–Why the opposition? Gates replied that: They are just afraid of change.
**. . . . proving again that ignorance and closed-mindedness is not reserved only for the poor.**
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I am not afraid of change. I am afraid of Putin’s Puppet.
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Diane: Yes, I know–nor am I afraid of change, at least not in this case. But how to get that to Gates. Oh, I forgot, he wouldn’t listen anyway.
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It is disheartening when nationally recognized journalists who might take on the subject of public school privatization and its product, a quickly growing segregation, do not ask questions of those who tell them that “it’s just union opposition” or in this case, “people don’t like change.” So much passive acceptance of the Big Money line.
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@Catherine Blanche King, have you ever taught? Teachers would love change (my husband is a teacher) but they are bound by law to teach what the state tells them to, which in this latest iteration, is Common Core. As for innovation, in the 1970s, laboratory schools often affiliated with universities, experimented with their curricula. I haven’t seen or heard much about experimentation in charter or religious schools. Most charter schools are focused on “grit” and “discipline” when they serve the poorer neighborhoods. Have you read up on what happened to Detroit? It’s a travesty. As is New Orleans. And, teaching is my husband’s late-in-life career, after military service and work in the private sector. It’s also the position that pays the least, and has the worst benefits. But there’s an obsession with painting teachers as greedy for some reason. It’s especially strange given that the main objective in establishing “choice” is simply to create revenue streams to the private companies and shell corporations that see the billions of dollars they can make from taxpayer funded schools.
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Kate: Have I ever taught? My goodness, yes. But you are preaching to the choir in your note, and I didn’t mean to leave a different impression. I was only saying how recalcitrant the “they don’t want change” argument is–e.g., Gates has the same disease as Betsy. I wonder if it comes with being an gazillionaire? I certainly wouldn’t know. :0l
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When you’re on a Mission from God everyone else is just an infidel.
The unwashed savages will be converted !!!
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YEP!
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Somehow the line that comes to mind is —
Blinded by the Light of God and Truth and Right …
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Notice her confusing and conflating a public magnate school* with all those other non-traditional public schools. As Chiara would say “Not a word about community public schools”.
*And yes, I have a problem with selective public magnet schools which serve to alienate many students who don’t qualify (usually through invalid criteria like test scores and/or grades) for those supposedly “better schools” and are left in the “dumping grounds” of the local community public school.
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Her first speech is not a offensive as it could have been She claims to support magnet schools and is offering funding for such schools through ESSA. Is she talking about public magnets or charters? Many large school districts have had public magnet schools for years. In Philly I attended a magnet school, just called a non-district school, more than fifty years ago. Philly later introduced a variety of public magnet schools designed to provide students options in the arts, technology, and other vocational training. If the city already offered a number of options within the public system, why was it necessary to turn schools in the city over to charters and cyber charters? This reckless change has resulted in more schools with diminished capacity due to dwindling budgets. DeVos should realize that not all change has value, and disruption is unhealthy for struggling students.
DeVos states that schools “are not a zero sum game.” Education is not a game at all. It is a serious endeavor that prepares young people for their future. DeVos needs to understand that school budgets, especially in states with caps, are working with a fixed amount. When charters drain public budgets, they are automatically providing less money to the public schools. The district must then increase class size and cut services because the budget is fixed and finite.
Peter Greene has some observations on DeVos’s speech. He points out that the best change comes from those that know what they are talking about along with the local community, not pay for play outsiders. He would like to see change that puts the students at the center of the discussion, not profit. He would like to eliminate all the testing as data mining as these do not help struggling students. http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/02/i-am-not-hostile-to-change.html#comment-form
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Betsy is now a theocrat: Some “code” in Betsy-speak: “future” means “theocracy.”
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“Is she talking about public magnets or charters?”
I’m quite sure (let’s say 99.9%) that those two things are the same entity in her brain (notice I didn’t say thinking).
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Magnets already get public funding. She had something else in mind.
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“Online Charter Students in Ohio Perform Far Worse Than Peers, Study Finds”
Yet DeVos wants to jam this for-profit garbage into every rural public school in the country.
Thanks but no thanks, ed reformers. These “innovations” are 15 years old and state after state has already tried them.
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Results seem not to matter. The “reform” steam roller keeps picking up speed crushing public schools in its path.
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In 1st major speech today, @BetsyDeVosEd sez she prefers “funding students” over “funding school buildings.”
This is a great theory but has little or nothing to do with the vast majority of public schools, who actually have to provide a seat for every child who shows up, no matter how many experiments ed reformers are conducting.
It’s great that she doesn’t have to deal with messy realities like “buildings” and “fixed costs” and “budgets” though. Very innovative.
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Chiara: CODE: (No funding of) “school buildings” is code for “neighborhoods.”
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People need to be at each and every speech she gives. #Resist
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i don’t usually post articles to you, i am sure you have seen this, however, maybe your readers of comments haven’t yet…. http://www.eclectablog.com/2017/02/chilling-this-is-why-weve-been-trying-to-warn-the-usa-about-betsy-devos-destroying-the-wall-between-church-state.html
it is eye-opening, to say the very least…. ~~kathie
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Betsy doesn’t believe its the unions against her ideals; its just easy to continue to scapegoat the unions for everything. She has her talking points, and that is that. Period. Aren’t we hip to and sick of the rhetoric by now? You know what? Up is up. Down is down. Left is left and right is right. No more nonsensical rhetoric that serves only the purpose the “them” continuing to try to place the blame where it doesn’t belong.
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We need to set the agenda ourselves, fight fire with fire, we need a Federal Safe Schools Public Works program for all schools in the country re: air quality, PCBs in caulking and lighting (removed from the NYC Public Schools by the EPA) as well as locations of cellular antennas.
“You never change things by fighting the existing
reality. To change something, build a new model
that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller
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With the charter school industry that’s favored by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos bleeding vital funds away from the public’s schools, the thoughtful person will ask: “Why are hedge fund people the main backers of the private charter school industry? After all, hedge funds are not known for a selfless interest in educating children.”
Well, the answer, of course, is MONEY.
For example, look at DeVos’ home state of Michigan: There are 1.5 million children attending public elementary and secondary schools and the state annually spends about $11,000 per student which adds up to pot of about $17 billion that private charter school operators have their eyes on. If these private operators succeed in getting what DeVos wants to give them — the power to run all the schools — these private profiteers could make almost $6 billion in profit just by firing veteran teachers and replacing them with low-paid inexperienced teachers, which is what the real objective of so-called “Value-Added” evaluations of veteran teachers is all about.
But wait! There’s more!
In fact, there are many more ways that big profits are being made every day right now by the private charter school industry. Here are just some:
The Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals” because of the financial fraud, the skimming of tax money into private pockets that is the reason why hedge funds are the main backers of charter schools.
The Washington State Supreme Court, the New York State Supreme Courts, and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A “PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL” because no charter school fulfills the basic public accountability requirement of being responsible to and directed by a school board that is elected by We the People. Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities. Nevertheless, they get public tax money.
Even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property.
NO PUBLIC TAX MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
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Well stated, Scisne! Thank you!
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