A conservative cartoonist set off an uproar when he created a carton about poor little Betsy DeVos, based on the iconic Norman Rockwell painting of 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, an African-American child entering a public school escorted by guards.
Betsy DeVos as Ruby Bridges! The definition of chutzpah!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is from the DeVos speech at a conference:
“Friday’s incident demonstrates just how hostile some people are to change and to new ideas. Without realizing it, we, too, can fall victim to this trap of seeing our work in education as an “us vs. them” approach.”
She really isn’t offering anything new. Conservatives have been pushing vouchers for 30 years and “choice” is all she offers. My state, Ohio, has vouchers. The children in the private schools test at lower levels than the public schools but that’s not even the issue. The issue is that ed reformers in this state were so focused on getting vouchers they abandoned the public schools- schools that actually do BETTER then voucher schools here.
I think ed reform has to offer something to parents and kids in public schools. This role they’ve adopted as professional scolds of public schools doesn’t offer any value. Our schools have no value other than as the “default” schools that back up the “choice” system?
Tell me again why or how this benefits children IN ordinary public schools. She doesn’t have any plan for public schools. Her plan for public schools is private and charter schools.
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-secretary-education-betsy-devos-prepared-remarks-magnet-schools-america-2017-national-policy-training-conference
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http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/02/i-am-not-hostile-to-change.html?m=1
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It specifically does not benefit public schools, but that is the end game for the Trump administration. They want to abolish these government agencies or damage them so significantly they are essentially useless. They don’t value public education because they don’t use it and don’t care if it’s available to the rest of us.
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“Murkowski followed Collins to the floor, stating, “I have serious concerns about a nominee to be secretary of Education … who has been so immersed in the discussion of vouchers.”
This is a valid complaint. DeVos and ed reform can ignore it, but if they’re omitting 85% of schools THAT EXIST they can’t expect people in those schools to pay any attention to them when they arrive to scold us on how close-minded we are.
I don’t want a voucher. What do they offer public schools?
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Disgusting.
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Chelsea Clinton’s response was appropriate: “What?! What?!”
Reformsters have no sense of right and wrong, no sense whatsoever. Grizzly.
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Please, no more Clintons.
There are plenty of Trump/de Vos critics who we can look to, without having to re-tread that failed dynasty.
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True. Sorry.
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Are you sure that it is a “conservative” cartoonist and not a regressive reactionary disguised as one??
I believe we would be better served by calling these regressive reactionaries for what they are, and they are not conservative for they wish to destroy much of what is the public good, that which society has heretofore considered necessary and good for all. In their desire to MAGA (sic) they are attempting to regress to a time and mode of being that never was nor would I ever want to be.
Conservatives conserve, preserve, protect and continue those societal goods for all not just for those whose avarice knows no bounds.
I consider myself a conservative. . . and a progressive. . . and a skeptical scientific free thinker bound by Constitutional ideals, not bound by faith/mythological beliefs.
The sooner we can get folks to realize that reactionary regressive/regressive reactionary thinking is nothing more than avaricious self agrandizement and has nothing to do with being a conservative, the sooner we can form alliances with those who would like to see the best of this country continued for all and not the few.
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An ugly sentiment.
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Trump won and he chose DeVos and if the US Department of Education has decided to become the US Department of Vouchers I don’t have any control over that, but they can hardly ask parents and children in public schools to consider them at all relevant or adding any value TO OUR SCHOOLS if that’s the plan.
I’ll ask my son if he wants to transfer to the Catholic school. If he says “no” (and he will) then that’s it? We’re just omitted from the agenda at DeVos’ ed dept? Even though 95% of the kids in this town attend the public school?
Okay, then. I don’t know why I’d want them to visit, except out of politeness. She’s offering nothing of value to his school unless he wants to “escape” it, which he doesn’t.
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What are her new ideas? My state HAS vouchers and charters and cybercharters. Unfortunately my state adopts every ed reform “idea” that comes down the pike and has for at least a decade.
We have all the ed reform bells and whistles. Fifteen years later none of these people have done anything to improve things for the vast majority in public schools- of ANY income level.
Shouldn’t someone actually have improved a public school by now? That IS how they sold this to voters, after all.
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Perhaps the problem is in the language: so many simply cannot get past the theory that a person who (as is written into this article) has for many years “been an education reform activist,” doesn’t have an ALL-child interest in addressing social inequity. The larger society seldom takes notice that the word REFORM might well mean “select and divide.”
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Hey, it’s from the Belleville News Democrat. My oldest son and daughter and I made the front page in a photo that took up about a third of the top half. It was opening day of the Cardinals season and I took the kids to sit in line to get bleacher seats, back when it was first come first serve and not assigned seating. I took along some snacks and one of those small camp folding table with chairs that were popular back then and we played games whiling away the couple of hours waiting for the gates to open. A young couple from Belleville asked if they could play Frustration with Jake and Darcy-they were like 6 & 4. Fine with me. As it was, a photographer from the News-Democrat came along looking for a “human interest” story involving anyone from Belleville and took our pictures-front page-hot damn! Drove over to the East Side and picked up a few copies of that one.
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“We utilize state data of nearly 1.7 million students in Ohio to study a specific sector of online education: K–12 schools that deliver most, if not all, education online, lack a brick-and-mortar presence, and enroll students full-time. First, we explore e-school enrollment patterns and how these patterns vary by student subgroups and geography. Second, we evaluate the impact of e-schools on students’ learning, comparing student outcomes in e-schools to outcomes in two other schooling types, traditional charter schools and traditional public schools. Our results show that students and families appear to self-segregate in stark ways where low-income, lower achieving White students are more likely to choose e-schools while low-income, lower achieving minority students are more likely to opt into the traditional charter school sector. Our results also show that students in e-schools are performing worse on standardized assessments than their peers in traditional charter and traditional public schools.”
this has been going on for 15 years in Ohio and everyone in the state knows it.
Why don’t Jeb Bush and Betsy DeVos know it? Do they think maybe they exist inside a national ed reform echo chamber?
Scolding us on “hard truths” in the public system while ignoring these giant ed reform failures – and worse- SPREADING them to other states- is not “science”. It’s ideology
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seconded
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It is all part of the hypocrisy of “reformers.” They turn a blind eye to all the waste, fraud, lies, and failure in their free market folly, and pounce on public schools at every opportunity.
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Nauseating.
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Diane: . . . piling one irony on another, answering the question, How much can we twist and distort history today?
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Not sure I understand your comment, Catherine. ???
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Duane I was responding to that picture of Betsy as the Norman Rockwell painting–history all twisted up and “rewritten” as if Besty’s call for change in education were equivalent to the iconic painting depicting a moment in the civil rights movement. Pile upon pile of irony–the little girl in the painting is black. God help us.
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Thanks, now I understand what you are getting at and fully concur with that twisting, ya know, alternate facts history.
What scares me most is THEDonald’s use of social media and the way the campaign mined social media to get certain messages to certain groups targeting different groups in different areas of the country and even different areas of a state or city to get certain points across. That aspect of campaigning will only get worse with the almost complete gullibleness and ignorance of many.
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Duane As long as Trump can STAMP all news organizations, as well as all who work for “the government” (for instance, our intelligence services and courts) as political enemies, and as long as his stupid base continues to believe him, it can only get worse. But I think he has recently sewn the seeds of his own demise, as stupidity and ignorance are prone to do.
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“Betsy D day”
Betsy D was born
A poor black child, forlorn
She tried to enter school
But others barred her — cruel
A day for Betsy D.
Is what we need to see
Like Martin Luther King
Her praises we should sing
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Poor, poor Elizabeth of Vos.
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