Nancy E. Bailey writes here about Secretary Betsy DeVos’s unpleasant experience at Bethune-Cookman University, where she was booed by the graduates of the class of 2017.
She thinks it was a travesty that the students were not allowed any say in the choice of their commencement speaker. After all, the day is meant to honor them and their accomplishments.
Instead, they got a speaker who is in a job for which she has no qualifications, a woman who has acted to protect predatory lenders and debt collectors, a woman who has never shown any commitment to advancing civil rights.
The students know that public education is a basic democratic right, and they did not respect this representative of an administration pledged to privatization and stripping away their families’ health care.
Bailey writes:
On a day designated for students—a day to honor their achievements—they have to listen to a woman of privilege tell them how she understands their struggle. They cannot even end their college journey without hackneyed political browbeating.
Perhaps if DeVos had the right ideas about schooling, her appearances would be more palatable. Perhaps if she really wanted to help public schools work for all children, but that’s not what she is about.
Betsy DeVos is the topping on the cake after Duncan and Spellings. She is the final straw, meant to end public education altogether—to put in place a system that rings true to her religiosity—a separate system of the haves and have nots. She is welcoming back the time before Brown v. the Board of Education. But my guess is she saw herself as Joan of Arc on that stage Wednesday.
This is not about God or the students. Privatization has never been about the welfare of the student. And it is not about religion either, though they might make you think it is. It is about money and it is about race. School privatization has always been about that.
Betsy DeVos should resign. But she was placed in this position by one vote if we can believe that. The problem is many Republicans and Democrats sold out on public schools a long time ago. The Washington mindset really is Betsy DeVos. I know it and you know it.
So boo away students. Remember this day as you journey forth. Maybe you can make America really great again. The rest of us are betting on that.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, DeVos shoudl resign!
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This may be the greatest thing you have ever written! Bravo…
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No, not at all. Diane is just pointing out what Bailey has written which is a good critique of DeVos as far as that goes.
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Apparently Betsy DeVos thinks she’s “doing God’s work.” If so, such treatment will seem sacrificial and right to her and will not deter her efforts.
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Romney thought God had chosen him for President in 2012.
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Linda: I suspect She had some play in what actually occurred?
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And as I say to that “doing god’s work” nonsense:
Which god?
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Duane e Swacker Speaking of gods, I woke up the other night realizing how similar the clapping was as the Stock Market opened (or closed–whichever) to the clapping followers of China’s “Great Leader.” Just a thought.
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I have been wondering lately how so many people can be so entranced with such things. It’s mind boggling by it has happened throughout time and space.
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but not by
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The president of Bethune-Cookman U. invited DeVos to the college in the hopes of currying favor with her since she holds the purse strings of the DOE budget. He was looking to make a new “friend” with cash benefits. Unfortunately, President Edison O. Jackson’s plan blew up in his face when he misread the level of resentment and hostility from the student body.
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“Unfortunately, President Edison O. Jackson’s plan blew up. . . ”
What can one expect from a supposed top dog adminimal??
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If you would like to take action against the DeVos’ speech at Bethune-Cookman, one way is to join the NAACP. The Florida branch has called for the resignation of the university president for inviting her to speak. http://thegrio.com/2017/05/11/naacp-bethune-cookman-pres-resign/
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We are here because we were sold out.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/noam_chomsky_most_remarkable_thing_last_election_bernie_sanders_20170515
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A woman also dedicated, if the consequences of the policies she has pushed in Michigan are any indication, to resegregating public schools in the United States. What a surprise that students at an Historically Black University would boo her!
Yes, it is time for this simpleton to resign.
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and time for our students’ anti-educational-privatizing movement to take power and grow
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Jeez, you said it Ciedie. I would love to teach a unit on capitalism and the public good….
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Maybe the future holds actual curricular truth?
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But so-called education reform is about religion; it’s about worshiping Mammon.
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Sister, like brother Erik Prince, doing God’s mercenary work.
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DeVos was always a political operative and she’s still a political operative. The people who say she’s not qualified are missing that she’s very experienced in pushing free market ideology. It’s all she’s ever done and it’s why she was hired.
Maybe colleges should reconsider commencement speakers in general. What about someone who is not that “celebrated” or “powerful” but is instead just a really amazing person?
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I completely agree, Chiara.
To paint these nefarious agents of privatization as bumbling and incompetent is to overlook their efficacy in achieving their ends. John Deasy’s tenure at LAUSD is frequently (dangerously) referred to as having been too unilateral and impolitic, as if he somehow lacked certain skills to adequately fulfill his job responsibilities. The truth is far more sinister: HE MEANT TO DO IT ALL. The iPads and wrongful termination suits were designed to hasten the fiscal demise of the district. Disallowing suspensions led to more unruliness on LAUSD campuses, scaring parents into the arms of lily-white charters like Citizens of the World. It was engineered chaos, and it worked.
The same can be said of DeVos. She may be unintelligent (lord knows there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence of it), but she is a skilled and ruthless privatizer. No one destroys public education by accident. We can’t mistake her willful obtuseness for lack of awareness. She knows exactly what she’s doing.
Know thyself, know thy enemy.
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“After all, the day is meant to honor them and their accomplishments.”
Maybe, but “the day” is also about the people who came before and will come after them.
I spent a lot of time telling my kids that while it’s important that they get their needs met at school, schools are more than a service contract provider. It really isn’t all about them, all the time. There’s a lot of other people there.
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Chiara: If the school president was left with a choice (ahem) between (a) funding the school adequately and (b) standing on the principles that the students well-understood, then it’s another case of market-thinking encroaching on and undercutting education in a democracy.
With such a structure at work, funding becomes a whip in hands of those who have no understanding of the seminal relationship between education and democracy–or they DO understand and want to kill that relationship or transform education into their “whipping boy” (pun intended) to use for their own anti-democratic purposes.
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Financially-weak institutions are more vulnerable to weaponized philanthropy. Five per cent of HBCU’s are in Gates’s Frontier Set. Only .005% of other colleges and universities are in the program. Frontier looks to me like digital replacement of current faculty, with course content created by a Frankenstein pairing of business and schools.
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A great point. Same can be said for our media. It is now for sale, and for some reason, the highest bidders seem to love Ed Reform.
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DeVos’ $1 mil. a month security detail disqualifies her. She was appointed by a President who lost the popular vote.
Off topic- media are reporting Trump’s tax law firm is a firm with offices in two countries, the U.S. and Russia.
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Honest question to which that I don’t know the answer: are we worse off with Secretary DeVos than we were with Secretary Duncan?
Imagine Secretary Duncan speaking before the same Bethune Cookman graduation audience. How would he have been received?
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I think we’re better off simply because people are more on their guard with DeVos and ready to fight back. Duncan was doing most of the same sorts of privatizing things, but more subtly, plus he was “our guy” so he was able to get away with more. Personally, I prefer an enemy who attacks from the front.
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Agreed, Dienne.
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“The Duncan Horse”
The Trojan horse
Attacked, of course
The city from within
The Duncan Horse
Was even worse
Cuz city helped him win
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I hope DeVos stays, and people continue to protest her appearances. She is helping to mobilize the left.
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I hate to admit this but Betsy has been a boon to NPE. We had 25,000 members last summer. Betsy made real everything we feared. We now have more than 350,000 members. In every state.
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Changing the puppet does not change the policy. Demanding DeVos’ resignation is a complete waste of time.
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Thin, blonde Secretaries of Education, in their positions because of New Yorkers, are becoming a cliche. Linked In describes Puerto Rico’s Sec. of Ed. as a MBA graduate of Strayer University (a for-profit featured in a Doonesbury cartoon about comparative amounts spent on advertising, student instruction and profit back to executives and share holders). When the hedge funds bankrupted Puerto Rico, a governing board in New York got to take over the island’s education department. Prior to the appointment, Madame Secretary had a stint in the U.S. Dept. of Ed. and started an education consulting firm.
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I agree with Nancy Bailey’s essay, but not w/her analogy.
DeVos is NOT the “topping on the cake after Duncan & Spellings.”
Rather (& I am being kind, using nice language here, in Diane’s living room), she is at the bottom of the stinking cesspool drudge, lower, even, than Duncan & Spellings.
That drudge may include the stinking wastewaters that Amy Goodman reported as created by pig farms, water that is, in fact, being sprayed into the air for drainage, for all nearby residents to smell & to breathe.
I would also include William Bennett in that bunch.
& a special thank you to Lamarr Alexander, who stood by her & simply glowed at her side during the hearings, after which she was confirmed.
Time to flush the toilet, folks, if you catch my drift.
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“That drudge may include the stinking wastewaters that Amy Goodman reported as created by pig farms, water that is, in fact, being sprayed into the air for drainage, for all nearby residents to smell & to breathe.”
As one who has to experience that shit spraying, and no, they’re not supposed to spray it like that but spray it low to the ground and then disk it in, which the ‘farmer’ around here does-I looked it up and I don’t think his hog farming operation has to abide by those regulations due to it not being quite large enough. But that smell is so acrid that it literally burns your nose if you drive by while it’s being sprayed on. I live about 1/3 of a mile away but if the wind is coming out of the south, I have to close up my home windows, it’s that bad.
Country real estate rule #1: Don’t by property or a house withing 5 miles of a pig farm.
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At my university, we had King as commencement speaker. But at least he is gone.
Perhaps Trump will be gone too, now that he personally helped the Russians to learn about state secrets
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?utm_term=.d41e0b234dac
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From the article:
“Many get strict teachers in classes where instruction is measured. . . ”
Ummm, no they don’t as “instruction” is not ever “measured”. The measurement meme of attempting to supposedly “measure” student learning has been around for almost a century. That doesn’t mean that it is logically correct. And to supposedly “measure instruction” is even more off base logically. To understand why please read the following critique of mine on the whole measurement meme:
The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
C’mon test supporters, have at the analysis, poke holes in it, tell me where I’m wrong!
I’m expecting that I’ll still be hearing the crickets and cicadas of tinnitus instead of reading any rebuttal or refutation.
Because there is no rebuttal/refutation!
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